12, Chungking Express

Why is this gem overlooked? Well, it’s a) an art house film that b) you have to read c) starring actors nobody has heard of. Oh, and Harvey et al. at Miramax bought the rights to distribute the film and stuck the tin on the bottom shelf of their extensive library, apparently unclear (perhaps understandably, given the description I’ve given above) on exactly what to do with it. Yet, this film is right up there with Pulp Fiction, a film with which it shares only a passing superficial quirkiness, when I think of films that defined 1990s cinematic sensibilities. While Pulp Fiction, with its self-aware exploration of cinematic tropes, is suffused with a post-modernist’s wink-wink nudge-nudge hipper-than-thou attitudinal broadside on pop-culture iconography, Chungking Express is, contrastingly, a great big romantic bear hug of a movie, a gleefully goofy study in stylistic abandon, with nary a concession to irony.

Perhaps the most gifted of the current crop of Hong Kong directors, Wong Kar-Wai (In the Mood for Love) here tells two separate tales of Hong Kong street cops whose love has gone bad, and who find unusual but affecting means to recovery. But it isn’t the story that captures us, it is a) the evocative acting talents of the singularly great Tony Leung (how can you resist a film where the puppy-eyed Leung gives pep talks to his household goods -- a slivery bar of soap, a lumpily stuffed animal, a ragged dish cloth?), with strong supporting help from Brigitte Lin, Takishi Kaneshiro and the wispy Faye Wong and b) the remarkable WKW’s talents with camera, music, editing and design, which he musters up to craft a film filled with a melancholy tenderness and silly romanticism. Critics who complained about the film’s lack of conventional narrative and stylish excesses seem to have missed the boat on this one. In the case of Wong Kar-Wai at least, style IS substance, and form IS content. And Chungking Express is, in form, style, content and substance, one of the great movies of the decade. (Dan Jardine)