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CHUNGKING EXPRESS

重慶森林

By Kar Wai WONG

BLOCK 2 DISTRIBUTION - as SALES All rights, World

Drama - Completed 1994

- Year of production
- 1994
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- HONG KONG (CHINA)
- Languages
- CHINESE
- Duration
- 103 mn
- Director(s)
- Kar Wai WONG
- Writer(s)
- Kar Wai WONG
- Cast
- Tony Chiu Wai LEUNG, Faye WONG, Takeshi KANESHIRO, Brigitte LIN
- Producer(s)
- Kar Wai WONG
- Synopsis
- The film is made up of two stories.
  
  CHUNGKING HOUSE, HONG KONG
  Nestling within this labyrinthine tenement in the heart of Tsimshatsui, Hong Kong’s main tourist area, are guest houses, hostels, flophouses, curry shops and restaurants and nearly every sort of shop. Its occupants range from budget travellers to Middle Eastern tourists and South-East Asian merchants. Chungking House is a world unto itself.
  
  MAY 1, 1994
  If the nameless Chinese woman in the blonde wig and sunglasses (Brigitte LIN) fails in her mission, she knows she will die on this date. She is a big time drug dealer, who has just been deserted by a group of Indians from Chungking House who had promised to help her export a large quantity of heroin. She must find them or she’s dead. It’s already almost midnight on April 30.
  The date also marks the first full month of separation between He Qiwu (Takeshi KANESHIRO), alias #223, a young cop, and his girlfriend, May. It has finally struck home that she meant it when she said she was leaving. Broken-hearted, he decides to drown his sorrows in a bar. He decides he will fall in love with the first woman who walks in. This just happens to be the woman in the blonde wig…
  
  MIDNIGHT EXPRESS
  This is the fast-food shop in Lan Kwai Fong, Hong Kong’s Soho where Faye (Faye WONG), a short-haired girl in her early twenties, works.
  
  #663, another young policeman (Tony LEUNG Chiu Wai), buys a chef salad here every night for his girlfriend, an air hostess (Valerie CHOW). But one day, just before going away on a long flight, she drops off a Dear John letter and the key to his house for him at the shop.
  
  #663 is infatuated with the girl. He goes slightly loopy, talking to the furniture about his feelings for her. Faye, suspecting something is amiss, uses the key left by the stewardess to snoop around his house, doing a little cleaning for him and then moving things around in the hope of gaining his attention.
  
  Finally #663 notices what’s happening and, catching a glimpse through the window of Faye in his house, he realises who the cause of it is. He makes a date with her at the California Restaurant, also in Lan Kwai Fong. But after he’s been there an hour, the manager of the Midnight Express comes to tell him that Faye has flown the coop. It’ll be one year before he finds out that she has left him dangling at Lan Kwai Fong’s California to go to the real California…