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We will make the same mistakes over and over, never sure of how the knot can be untied.
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#Chungking express song series#
Each of us, the soundtrack seems to suggest, is doomed to a life lived under the shadow of an inescapable series of repetitions. But these are used repetitively, telling the whole story, circling back on themselves, punctuating the entire film. Yes, the film features just a few songs: ”Things in Life” by Dennis Brown, “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas, Dinah Washington’s “What a Difference a Day Makes” and Faye Wong’s Cantonese cover of “Dreams” by the Cranberries”. This idea of artificiality in most obvious in the Chungking Express soundtrack.
#Chungking express song movie#
From the way it happily blends genre (noir meets screwball comedy) to the convention-adhering conclusion, there’s no attempt to convey reality as it is, and the movie is all the better for it. Essentially: the city is alive in every frame, and yet it also feels artificial – as though the film is aware of its very being as a film. Woozy blues are shot through with slashes of neon the piercing striplights of late-night supermarkets glimmer and glow next to adverts for exotically American brands like Coca Cola and McDonalds and Brigitte Lin (who meets the first cop), forever in Hollywood sunglasses, is wreathed in smoke, an icon of her own making. Wong’s long-term collaborators Christopher Doyle and Andrew Lau make the city look gorgeous. Though I remember Chungking Express so much I could watch it with my eyes closed, that would be a mistake. And third, the soundtrack is a gorgeous, sentimental selection of songs that – despite being minuscule in their number – offer a strange, fuzzy feeling rolling around your stomach, even after watching the movie alone in the dark time and time, and time and time again. Second, I love schmaltz, and as luck would have it, Chungking Express mutates itself into a very schmaltzy movie. First, I prefer familiarity and comfort, and films like Chungking Express leave me feeling like I’ve just eaten a kilo of spaghetti carbonara in the bath. Like Frank Ocean, the film is a firm favourite of mine. Though different, both stories tell a tale of hope, the unknown, and the repercussions of chance. In the second, another broken-hearted policeman – Cop 663 (Tony Leung) – bumps into and subsequently falls for Faye (played by Faye Wong). In the first half, the recently dumped Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) spends each day buying tinned pineapples and pining for the lover who fled him on April Fool’s day. If you’ve yet to see it, the film’s story is cut into two. Beloved by Frank Ocean (it sits between Eraserhead and Raging Bull on his favourite films ever list) and Quentin Tarantino, the film is responsible for turning a chaotic hotel-cum-bistro-cum-sari-shop into a bona fide holiday destination for avid cinema-goers and arch-romantics. The cashier’s name is Faye, and she’s one of the central characters in the film Chungking Express.