“Chungking Express” The atmosphere that flowed through Hong Kong in the early 1990s as captured by the masterpiece of romantic movies

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2021.09.21Takatoshi Inagaki

“The atmosphere of the times” captured by improvisation

In this way, the story and filming of ``Chungking Express'' were improvised, but even amidst all this, there were two things that Kar-wai had to protect. They are ``city'' and ``people.''

The origin of this film was that when Kar-wai returned from filming ``The Flaws of Paradise'' in mainland China, he felt an affinity for Hong Kong. From there, Kar-wai came up with two stories, and the first part was set in Chungking Mansions, which he has a close connection to.

Chungking Mansions is a complex building located in the downtown area of Tsim Sha Tsui, located at the southern tip of Hong Kong's Kowloon Peninsula. As Indians appear throughout the film, this is a place where many immigrants from India actually live, and there are many backpackers as there are cheap hotels in the area. Kar-Wai also said, ``It doesn't feel like Hong Kong at all,'' and a major theme of the production must have been to capture this place as realistically as possible on screen using guerrilla filming.

Of course, Kar-wai asserts that "all locations were important," not just Chungking Mansions. As he says, ``Every place, like humans, silently witnesses (events),'' and ``Chungking Express'' is also a story in which the city is the main character. All sorts of people appear in the streets and on the streets, and near misses occur. In the first part, when the blonde woman stands alone after kidnapping the girl, Faye comes out of the store carrying a stuffed tiger. Kar-wai also says:

"I was interested in the 'distance' between people. I made this film because I wanted to capture the moments of natural contact between people. We live our lives too fast, and physically Sometimes we overlook the people closest to us. That's why I wanted to treat the time of a few seconds and the space of a few centimeters."

Set in Hong Kong in the spring of 1994, this work depicts the city as the main character and the people living there on a scale of seconds and centimeters. Keeping this concept in mind, Kar-Wai must have thought of characters from the cast of actors he had assembled, wrote the script, and shot the film like a documentary. As a result, it captured the sense of urgency that the city of Hong Kong has and the atmosphere of the times. As a result, it may have been partly inevitable that this film turned out to be a ``pop and stylish love story that hints at the return of Hong Kong.''

Kar-wai's tendency to ``confront the times of urban Hong Kong'' became more acute in his subsequent works `` In the Mood for Love '' (2000) and `` 2046 '' (2004). With these two films, Kar-wai will once again be making romantic films that directly reference Hong Kong's history. By the way, Tony Léon: The Professional appears in both films, and Faye Wong also returns to Kar-Wai's work in 2046.

[References/Materials]

“ Chungking Express ” DVD (bonus footage), Asmik Ace Entertainment

"Chungking Express" Theater Program, Prenon Ash Co., Ltd., 1995

“ Filmmakers [14] Wong Kar-wai ” Kinema Junposha, 2001

Jimmy Ngai, Masayo Ogawa (translator) “ Wong Kar-wai ” Kinema Junposha, 1996

Masayuki Yoshikawa, Toru Kurata (editors) “ 60 Chapters for Understanding Hong Kong ” Akashi Shoten, 2016

Text: Takatoshi Inagaki

Writer/editor/dramaturg. His writing activities span across fields such as movies, dramas, comics, theater, and art. Contributes to theater programs such as the movies ``Tenet'' and ``Joker,'' edits web media, edits exhibition catalogs, and appears on radio. Major stage works include dramaturg for PARCO's productions of ``Kengyo Yabuhara'', Tristone Entertainment's ``Shoujo Kamen'', prosthetic assistant for Kinoshita Kabuki's ``Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan'', ``Sannin Kichizo'', ``Kanjincho'', and KUNIO's ``Greeks''. ”Literature.

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