Chungking Express (1994)

This is my take on the Wong Kar Wai astetic:- he takes the Hollywood/Western (social) love story and delivers it in Eastern packaging/photography. Now I'm not saying there's anything specifically wrong with that- they're very cute movies but I don't understand the hype.
On the new BluRay that distributor Artificial Eye has put out, i was reminded of something. In the later 90's, after the success of Pulp Fiction- Tarantino had the idea of distributing unseen or forgotten movies under a label called Rolling Thunder. I found this out a couple years ago, when i rented an old Grindhouse movie called Switchblade Sisters in Canada, which was under that banner as was Kitano's Sonatine, Canadian cult movie-Hard Core Logo and ChungKing Express; and Tarantino made an introduction to the movie for the DVD, which appears on the BluRay. As he tells it, Wong's films are unique in Chinese cinema because he tells these dramatic love stories in a market populated by action.
Basically, Chungking Express is 2 love stories that mediate on loneliness and finding love. The first one concerns a young naive cop who's mourning his last relationship and a shady woman in blonde wig, who seems to be involved in smuggling guys from India to Hong Kong. It's all very non-linear and since it's obviously in Chinese difficult to pick up (for me at least) to pick up the threads of what's going on; she's strutting around with a purpose without actually doing or saying much and he seems to be buying tins of pineapple (!?) - they get together sort of but... It doesn't really land (to me.)
The 2nd story is far more linear and far more simple to follow. It concerns another cop, who's a little older and a little more together (played by Tony Leung, a Wong favorite and memorable from as the bent cop from Infernal Affairs) and the cute girl that works at the fast food joint, he frequents everyday. Their story is far more traditional in the sense, that we know they should get together but he is in denial about the failure of his last relationship and isn't ready to move on-you get the picture.
The girl, played by Faye Wong is completely delightful with her short hair and bopping to California Dreaming and Faye Wong's own Chinese version of Dreams by The Cranberries, which is similarly delightful because it's musically exact and her vocals make the song even software and more cuddly to listen to.
I think there's a lot of subtlety that got lost in translation for me in watching this and maybe it didn't work for me as well as I'd hoped because it was a bad mixture of romance which is generally undemanding to watch and in a foreign language, which obviously requires a lot of attention but it is a very pretty film to watch.

I watched ChungKing Express (1994)
on BluRay, via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Dazed & Confused (1993)...