The police department considered it to be overused with electricity so it's very dangerous, it could catch fire easily. 'When we researched the building we found there were over 200 hostels there, very shabby, and over 5,000 tourists every day. 'I've been curious about this building since I was very young,' explains Shanghai-born Wong, whose father used to manage a nightclub in the basement. The action is centred around Tsimshatsui, Hong Kong's tourist area, and particularly the building Chungking Mansions - a vast, crammed complex of shops, restaurants, bars and flophouses. A melancholy sort of screwball farce put through a formalist blender, it's the story of two lovelorn cops, two women and a lot of hanging around, but everything, explains the director, begins with the place itself. Set in a snack bar and its environs, Chungking Express is urban cinema par excellence - a story of crowds, crossed paths, stolen kisses and snatched takeaway meals. Wong Kai-Wai's film Chungking Express, released this week, is Hong Kong from the inside, but with a similarly cosmopolitan perspective - the city refracted through an optic of fast food, Hollywood glamour and early new wave shooting style. That film - made by a director very much at home both in Hong Kong and the US - was at once an insider's and an outsider's view. Another place, however, that's beginning to take on distinctive contours for us is Hong Kong - largely from the huge volume of genre action movies that have become available on video here in the last few years, but also from the occasional legit production like Wayne Wang's underrated 1989 film Life Is Cheap But Toilet Paper Is Expensive, a tall tale of a Chinese-American cowboy lost in the Hong Kong labyrinth. Viewers in the West, whether or not they travel much in the real world, know their way pretty well around virtual versions of New York, Los Angeles and perhaps Paris - but certainly not London, which hasn't figured on cinema's imaginative map for a long time. (Either that or wishing you were in love.F or most filmgoers, only three or four cities exist in the world at any given time.
The acting and script are both first rate - tony leung can do no wrong in my book - and overall it leaves you hungry for more little gems like this. A film that is romantic in all the right places, in all the right ways (believe me it will make you smile not reach for the sick bucket - Hollywood take note)and has a deft light comic touch that leaves you smiling in recognition at the heartbreak rather than crying over it. A film about love that is mired in reality (though shot through the lens of alcehmist - truly a visual experience to be savoured)though not gritty reality, just every day boring life and love, the sort of love we go through each day ourselves, the kinda incomplete love where two people touch each other briefly and spend more time dreaming of what could be rather than it actually taking place. I am not going to go into any details about the plot (some people have accused it of not having one)or what takes place in the film, just want to say that this is the real deal. There, that is as simple as I can make it out. The Hong Kong cut was released on VHS/laserdisc by World Video and on VHS/LD/DVD by Mei Ah. The international cut is Wong's preferred version and has been used for most home video releases. The international version strips out the music (leaving only ambient noise), although "Dreams" still appears at the end of the film.
Indian music plays during the smugglers' arrival at the airport in international prints in the Hong Kong version, the title theme plays.The international version expands the scenes where The Blonde prepares for the smuggling trip and later searches for the smugglers.'Kar Wai Wong' made several changes to the international version, bringing the running time to 102 minutes: The original Hong Kong release ran 98 minutes.
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