Chungking Express (1994)

Chungking Express is an extraordinary film that plays with genre, narrative and chronology. The Film reminds me of Pulp Fiction meets Chinese romantic comedy, but with an aesthetic twist.Together, elements tell the stories of four people, breaking the conventional traits of Classical Cinema.

The film plays around with genre. The beginning starts with an action sequence, as a policeman chases a felon. However, the tone and smooth cinematic effect contradicts the action genre, making the sequence disoriented. In addition, the voice-over talks about love in the chasing opening sequence, which essentially expresses a paradoxical feel of genre. The film continues with a storyline about drug trafficking, then switches to a similar story about a different policeman, then switches to another storyline of a woman trying to achieve her dreams. The change of tone in the film leads to an ambiguous genre. This is an unconventional trait for a film, contradicting elements of Classic Hollywood.

Another element that contradicts Classic Hollywood, is its narrative structure. Chungking Express revolves around the points of view of four different characters. The film provides voiceovers from all four characters, dividing the plot in four as each part focuses on a particular character. This enables the viewer to see every side of a character's perspective as the storylines intertwine. Thus, rather than identifying with one or two characters in the film, the film allows the viewer to become familiar with four different characters.

The chain of events within the film are not told chronologically. The plot is disorderly presented based on the focused character. The events taken place are told chronologically by each character, but as a whole, the order is non linear because of the separations of stories. For example, in the beginning of the film, we see Faye walking out of a store with the stuffed animal as the woman in the blonde wig waits outside the store. The action taken place in Feye's point of view is later presented later in the film.