Chungking Express, Happy Together
reviewed May 2002
Chungking
Express is really two movies in one. Wong Kar-wai's
melancholy
look at love, engaging and beautifully done, gives us two vignettes
(the
transition between them is a bit confusing) of lost love dealt with in
different ways. In the first, a lovelorn Hong Kong policeman
(Takeshi
Kaneshiro, who's tremendously appealing) treats his heartbreak like a
talisman,
believing that if he does exactly the right rituals, his lover will
come
back. The second also stars a policeman (Tony Leung Chiu Wai)
whose
girlfriend has left him; while he mopes and holds touching
conversations
with his shirts and washcloths, the girl (Faye Wong) who works at the
lunch
counter where he eats every day, fascinated by the downcast cop, sneaks
into his apartment to rearrange his things. The movie is
gorgeously
shot (amazing considering it was apparently shot in "found locations"
and
only with available light, sort of a Dogmesque approach) and deeply
empathetic,
much like Wong's later In the Mood for Love,
though Chungking Express moves a little faster.
Highly
recommended.
Wong's Happy
Together is less successful, a self-consciously
arty film about a gay Chinese couple who bicker their way through
Argentina,
breaking up and reuniting, hurling insults at each other. It
doesn't
help that neither character is particularly likable: Ho (Leslie
Cheung)
is cruel and manipulative, but Lai (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) is a
doormat.
Watching the unpleasantries between them gets old fast. The
intrusive
cinematography is the opposite of Chungking Express's organic,
flowing
camera work. Here, the film changes from black and white (Lai's
face
was made for the shadows and starkness of black and white) to color for
no apparent reason. The movie annoyed me so much, especially
because
I watched it right after seeing Chungking Express, that I
fast-forwarded,
wandered in and out of the room, and finally shut it off.
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