Unlike the languid slowness of Ashes, Chungking is sprightly and fast-paced, its understanding of time as malleable as its step-printed chase sequences that begin the film. The results, of course, were revelatory, not just for Wong’s status as an auteur filmmaker but for the world of independent global cinema: Chungking Express was a huge success, at least critically, and established Wong Kar-wai as a known quantity among Western cinephiles. (A third planned story would be scrapped from Chungking and turned into future feature Fallen Angels.) The context of the film’s creation is also unique in its timing: Wong made Chungking on a two-month break from the years-long editing process of his sprawling wuxia epic Ashes of Time, out of a need to break out of that mode and try something new in the form of a two-chapter set of love stories set in the modern day.
Time is absolutely on Wong’s mind in every stage of Chungking, from his understanding of chronology to the liminal states of his characters. Items become totemic, indicative of the passage of time and our connections to each other. A curious food stand worker ( Faye Wong) sneaks into the messy apartment of another cop ( Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) just to learn more about him, and clean up his belongings. A heartbroken cop ( Takeshi Kaneshiro) purchases a can of pineapples from his local convenience store for 30 days, each one with an expiration date of May 1st - both evocative of his recently-departed girlfriend (also named May) and of the month she tells him she needs to think their relationship over.
In the world of Wong Kar-wai‘s Chungking Express, people, and the relationships between them, are defined by the objects they buy. Is there anything in this world that doesn’t?”