Chungking Express

The Hong Kong film CHUNGKING EXPRESS by director Wong Kar-wai is considered almost cult in professional circles. This love story with a criminal plot is shot at a "typically Asian" fast pace and is also quite loose in terms of dramaturgy. The film is considered the pinnacle of the director's specific and formally free-spirited style, in which, for example, the directors of photography shoot individual images almost exclusively by hand cameras. It captures the romantic troubles of two police officers who are coping with being abandoned by their partners. The lightly sketched stories serve as a stylistically pure and impressive study, stylistically capturing everyday life. The film consists of two independent stories about people on the margins of society or people who are completely insignificant to society, such as drug smugglers or snack bar saleswomen. They speak about loneliness in the midst of a crowd, of an inability to communicate, and of unfulfilled love. At the same time, the film is a celebration of the hustle and bustle of overcrowded Hong Kong, the "city of a thousand immigrants," as the former British colony was nicknamed.