‘Joyous and uplifting': why Chungking Express is my feelgood movie
The film has a playful energy and is brimming with offbeat humour. Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Takeshi Kaneshiro play the heartbroken policemen, both deep in denial over the end of their relationships. We watch them cope in very different ways with their heartache. Kaneshiro's Cop 223 pines outside his ex's flat, buys cans of pineapple because they were her favorite food and goes on jogs so his body has no water left for tears.
One night, he comes across Brigitte Lin's mysterious femme fatale in a dimly lit bar. Decked out in a bouncy blonde wig, sunglasses and a trench coat, perpetually prepared for both sunshine and rain, she has problems of her own. Their encounter is told as a noir-style crime caper that looks at the seedy underbelly of Hong Kong complete with shootouts and runaway drug mules.
The film then moves on to Leung's Cop 663, whose story combines light-hearted romance with a dash of screwball comedy. He mopes at home in his underwear after his girlfriend leaves him, giving objects around his flat a tough talking to for letting themselves go. Cantopop singer Faye Wong plays a music-loving fast-food worker, also named Faye, who develops a crush on him and tries to work her way into his heart by secretly cleaning his flat. It's an act that is less domestic servitude and more a cunning plot to change someone on a cellular level without them realising.
If that all sounds too zany and affected, it's not. Chungking Express somehow manages to be both gently whimsical and beautifully profound while mining plenty of laughs even in the desolate gloom of breakup despair. All four leads are unbelievably charismatic, and watching the two couples dance tentatively around each other is an unadulterated delight.
I was 16 when I first saw Chungking Express and even though I grew up in Surrey, there was something about its depiction of alienation and not quite belonging in the big city that resonated with me. Perhaps because I also felt the same way as a second-generation Chinese immigrant; my family was one of the few ethnic minorities living on a very white council estate. I would borrow arthouse films from my local library, dreaming of a more exciting life.
My parents were big fans of mainstream Chinese blockbusters, martial arts epics and triad crime films. When they brought home a VHS copy of Chungking Express, they had no idea of the impact it would have on me. It wasn't so much a breath of fresh air as a neon-hued tornado obliterating everything I knew about Hong Kong cinema.
Over the years, I've rewatched all of Wong's films many times. I am just as smitten by his romantic masterpiece In the Mood for Love and the moody drama Days of Being Wild, but Chungking Express is the one I return to the most. It is as effervescent as the Coca-Cola that is blatantly plugged in the film and as exhilarating as the Mamas & the Papas' song California Dreamin' that Faye plays on repeat.
It never fails to cheer me up. Each and every time I'm ridiculously charmed by the sight of Leung asking a giant white teddy bear if he's been in a fight, Faye dancing behind the snack bar counter brandishing condiments like glow sticks, and Kaneshiro trying to hit on women in a bar by awkwardly asking them if they like pineapple. The film is just so incredibly sweet, so astute about our interior lives, and so stylish in a way that still feels fresh and exciting even years later. Despite the sadness at the heart of Chungking Express, watching it feels like basking in sunlight.
One of my favourite lines from the film comes from Cop 223, touched by a surprise message, as he speculates: 'If memories could be canned, would they also have expiry dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries.' My love for Chungking Express will never expire. Unlike other, more straightforward feelgood movies, it doesn't shy away from depicting the rough edges of urban life and how it can leave you feeling unmoored. But it shows how there's always a chance to make a meaningful connection, hope emerging like a rainbow after the rain, scattering the grey clouds from the sky.
Chungking Express is available on Max and The Criterion Channel in the US and to rent digitally in the UK and Australia
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Melbourne international film festival 2025: the 10 movies you must see this year
Director: Bi Gan Country: China, France Bi Gan's last feature, 2018's Long Day's Journey Into Night, became the subject of unlikely wrath in its home country when it was marketed as a sumptuous romance to Chinese filmgoers – who then showed up on its New Year's Eve premiere to watch an elliptical, esoteric odyssey that concludes with a 59-minute, one-shot dream sequence shot in 3D. The Cannes prize winner Resurrection sounds equally enigmatic: a 160-minute epic set in a future where humans no longer dream, though a group of fringe rebels defy the odds. The film traverses Chinese national history as well as cinematic lineage; by all accounts, it sounds suitably deranged. – Michael Sun Director: Mary Bronstein Country: US Who doesn't have time for Rose Byrne? The Australian actor is a reliable and perhaps under-appreciated performer but rarely gets big, meaty, interesting, grandstanding roles … until now. In this year's opening night film she stars as Linda, a Long Island therapist caring for a sick daughter and navigating a series of intense crises. Byrne's performance has tongues wagging, attracting descriptors such as 'monumental', 'tour de force' and 'harrowingly brilliant'. – Luke Buckmaster Director: Eva Victor Country: US Twee is good again! We are so back. Eva Victor's Sundance award-winning debut (produced by Barry Jenkins) follows a long legacy of arch, affected comedies that unpeel to reveal their base anxieties: Frances Ha, Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, Miranda July's entire oeuvre, and any American indie made circa 2010. Sorry, Baby might be twee's purest form: a New England pastoral following a twentysomething professor of letters (Victor herself) so full of blundering charm and jagged one-liners that the film's emotional centrepiece lands like a full-body tackle. – Michael Sun Director: Joshua Oppenheimer Country: Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, UK, Sweden Joshua Oppenheimer is best known for directing gut-wrenching documentaries about mass murders in Indonesia (The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence). Nobody saw his first narrative film coming: a post-apocalyptic musical entirely set in an underground bunker, in a future world made uninhabitable by the climate crisis. Reviews so far have been mixed: Radheyan Simonpillai called it 'intermittently fascinating' while Wendy Ide pegged it as 'wildly ambitious' but 'catastrophically self-indulgent'. – Luke Buckmaster Director: Constantine Costi Country: Australia, UK It's the film about making porridge you never knew you needed! Constantine Costi's charming doco unpacks the world's annual porridge-making competition, which takes place in the Scottish village of Carrbridge. As I wrote in my review, 'a pleasure to watch – with endearing salt-of-the-earth subjects, a lovely ebb and flow, and a tone that feels just right: neither overly serious nor tongue in cheek.' – Luke Buckmaster Director: Charlie Shackleton Country: US, UK It's 2025 and everything is just true crime now. Every murderer has a six-part Netflix limited series. Every scammer has a podcast and a spot on Dancing With the Stars. Every TikToker is an armchair detective and every TikTok is CSI. So what now? If you're British documentarian Charlie Shackleton, you try – and fail – to make a film about the Zodiac Killer. And then from the ashes you build something weirder: part send-up, part homage to the true crime genre, full of 'amusing comments on all [its] cliches and mannerisms', says our Guardian review. – Michael Sun Director: Raoul Peck Country: France, US We'd all love to live in a world where George Orwell got it wrong, and none of his ideas came to pass. Sadly the great author's work continues to be terrifyingly prescient. Director Raoul Peck's documentary has unpacked Orwell's life and career while constructing a thesis that connects the ideas in Nineteen Eighty-Four to contemporary events, including the US Capitol attack and the war in Ukraine. – Luke Buckmaster Director: Christian Petzold Country: Germany It can often feel masochistic to watch a Christian Petzold film in the depths of Melbourne winter; his most recent trio (this one included) have been devastatingly chic pictures of beautiful and willowy Europeans swimming, sunbathing and idling while slowly digesting some life-altering tragedy or heartache. Petzold's longtime muse, Paula Beer, returns here as a woman who's taken in by an older, genial stranger after her boyfriend dies in a road accident – though an eerie mist hangs over the countryside cottage like a haunting. At 86 minutes, it feels close to a novella: gauzy and elegant. – Michael Sun Directors: Maggie Miles and Trisha Morton-Thomas Country: Australia The life and legacy of the inimitable David Gulpilil was unpacked in Molly Reynolds' superb 2021 documentary My Name Is Gulpilil – a very tough act to follow. This new film, narrated by Hugh Jackman and co-directed by Maggie Miles and Trisha Morton-Thomas, captures the final stage of Gulpilil's story, in which he was laid to rest in his homeland of Gupulul in Arnhem Land. Miff's program calls it a 'continent-traversing commemoration worthy of his transcendent talent'. – Luke Buckmaster Director: Genki Kawamura Country: Japan As a fan of both the original version of The Exit 8 and its virtual reality spin-off, I kind of can't believe they made a movie out of it. It's essentially a spot-the-difference video game in which the player navigates a series of near-identical hallways in a Tokyo subway station and must decide whether each environment is exactly the same as the first hallway they encountered. So not exactly a production crying out for feature film treatment. Kazunari Ninomiya plays the tripped-out commuter who really should've caught the bus. – Luke Buckmaster Melbourne international film festival 2025 runs 7-24 August in venues across the city and regional Victoria, as well as online through Acmi. Tickets sales open now for Miff members and will open to the general public on 15 July
Daily Mail
7 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Why Prince Philip's rumoured love-child finally snapped after an awkward encounter with the Royal writes CHRISTOPHER WILSON
One day in 1988, out of the blue, Max Boisot, a respected professor in a Chinese university issued a bombshell statement declaring that he was not the son of Prince Philip. What made it odd was that nobody had asked him if he was. But for a moment it looked as though Mr Boisot was in possession of the answer to the age-old question – was Philip ever unfaithful to the Queen? And did he leave behind, after his 2021 death, a string of secret love-children? It's true that rumours had circulated for years that Boisot, the son of Philip's childhood friend and confidante Hélène Cordet, was indeed Philip's love-child. His sister Louise too, perhaps. Certainly his school fees at Gordonstoun had been paid for by Philip, the prince was his godfather, and Philip had gone out of his way to help Hélène establish a showbusiness career in London after the war. But on the day he made his statement, the matter had been long forgotten. It was as if Boisot wanted to draw attention to himself – and because he did, certain facts suddenly began to emerge which suggested that the professor could indeed have been a royal love-child. We can't ask him now because he died at the age of 67 in 2011 - but the bare facts, carefully chosen by his mother Hélène in her memoir 'Born Bewildered', point towards Max having royal blood. 'Unfortunately, far from quelling innuendo, Miss Cordet's autobiography merely fanned it,' wrote Philip's biographer John Parker. 'That way her book sold more copies.' Max had his school fees at Gordonstoun paid for by Philip, the prince was his godfather, and Philip had gone out of his way to help Hélène establish a showbusiness career in London after the war Philip and Hélène were childhood friends – she three years older – growing up in the affluent suburbs of Paris. Their parents had been thrown out of Greece – Philip's with little money, Hélène's with rather more. If they were close it didn't stop Hélène, a giddy extrovert, from romancing other boys - and in 1938 she married an Englishman, William Kirby, with a bashful-looking 17-year old Philip acting as best man. The marriage didn't last, and during the war years Hélène gave birth first to Max, then Louise. On the rebound she'd married a Frenchman, Marcel Boisot, but almost immediately he was posted to Cairo, and question marks remained over the children's parentage for many years to come. At the war's end – this marriage over, too - Hélène brought the children to London and set up a career as an actress and nightclub singer. Soon she was on TV hosting a show called Cafe Continentale. Philip had joined the Thursday Club, a notorious group of arty reprobates with a taste for wine, women and song. Through his contacts there he was able to get Hélène her own nightclub, the Saddle Room, which enjoyed a lucrative run during the 1950s and 60s. More than that, he paid for Hélène's kids' education, with Max being sent to his old school, Gordonstoun. This was long after Philip's marriage to the future Elizabeth II. Gossip columnists – knowing but not saying, or perhaps saying but not knowing – named Hélène as the 'mystery blonde' in Philip's life. And so Palace courtiers, ever suspicious of Philip's activities, ensured that when the Coronation came around in 1953, Hélène was barred from the ceremony. The children went with their grandmother – and when asked, Hélène was obliged to say she'd 'overslept' and thus missed the greatest event in postwar Britain. She liked to keep everybody guessing. Interviewed by a magazine, she said she 'got hot under the collar' watching Philip on TV. '[The way she spoke] was quite enough to spark off a story of major proportions,' wrote John Parker. And then it emerged that, though the children carried the name Boisot, their 'father' had not officially claimed parentage of them until years later, shortly before Hélène's memoirs came out. The question mark remained. On leaving school Max, an exceptionally gifted young man, became an architect and then management consultant. Louise followed in her mother's footsteps and became an actress and pop singer, touring with The Beatles and Roy Orbison. Gerry and the Pacemakers wrote their hit 'Don't Let the Sun Catch you Crying' for her, but soon she retreated to her native Greece, married, and thereafter shunned the limelight. For Max, it seemed as though he couldn't get far enough away from Britain, its royal family, and the constant whispering – and so after marrying a young debutante, Virginia Stevens, he left the country for good. By the mid-1980s he was Professor of Economics at the EuroChinese Business Centre on the outskirts of Beijing - about as far away from Buckingham Palace as he could get. And there the story would have rested – except that in October 1986 Philip, on a tour of China, went out of his way to visit Max. It started the rumour-mill all over again and finally Boisot was forced to break cover. 'I have heard these rumours all my life,' he declared, 'But they are ridiculous. Helen Cordet with her daughter who performed with The Beatles and Roy Orbison. Gerry and the Pacemakers wrote their hit 'Don't Let the Sun Catch you Crying' for her, but soon she retreated to her native Greece, married, and thereafter shunned the limelight 'My father – my real father – lives in Paris and it is silly to say otherwise. All this goes back to [Philip and Helene's] childhood friendship and there's nothing more to it than that.' What Max was too gracious to say is that if anybody stoked the rumours over the years, it was his mother Helene. And it left open – to this day – the intriguing question of whether Philip was ever unfaithful to his wife. And whether he left behind more children than the ones we know about.
The Review Geek
12 hours ago
- The Review Geek
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Season 1 Review – The worst possible spin-off
Season 1 Episode Guide Episode 1 -| Review Score – 3.5/5 Episode 2 -| Review Score – 4/5 Episode 3 -| Review Score – 2.5/5 Episode 4 -| Review Score – 3.5/5 Episode 5 -| Review Score – 2.5/5 Episode 6 -| Review Score – 3.5/5 Episode 7 -| Review Score – 3.5/5 Episode 8 -| Review Score – 1/5 Episode 9 -| Review Score – 2/5 Episode 10 -| Review Score – 2/5 Episode 11 -| Review Score – 1.5/5 Episode 12 -| Review Score – 3/5 Episode 13 -| Review Score – 1.5/5 While My Hero Academia focuses on people studying to become the official protectors of their country, its spin-off, Vigilantes, delves into a more shadowy place. Koichi, Knuckleduster, and Pop☆Step work to protect their city without having a legal Hero License. That means not only are the villains out to get them, but also the police and professional heroes too. This leads them to a new drug, Trigger, which affects citizens' senses and makes them go berserk. Still, these 'instant-villains' appear to be mere pawns in a much bigger game. So, the vigilante group investigates the incidents while clashing and secretly collaborating with heroes. My Hero Academia: Vigilantes has a good premise that can distinguish the series from the original show. However, it already fails at this most basic element. What are the differences between heroes and vigilantes? Is it only the legal issue? If so, why is it important that people have a professional license to protect others? This could go on, but it'd be pointless as the anime doesn't answer any of them. It does go a little in-depth into the history of vigilantism in one episode, which is quite interesting. However, it feels like a passing concern only. The protagonist group only clashes with heroes during one episode, and being vigilantes never actually affects them. If you didn't start watching it from episode one, you probably wouldn't even know they aren't heroes. It's a real shame the show doesn't explore what could be such an interesting dynamic. But that's only a taste of how much Vigilantes doesn't care about its premise. The Trigger drug is only a major threat for about two episodes, then it's quickly side-lined. In fact, after a while, it becomes just another unimportant element of the series. It's used for jokes, or we see the instant villains being defeated by unrelated heroes in seconds. Before even reaching the middle of the first season, the anime's two most important plot points almost completely lose their effect. How is the audience gonna find them interesting, if even the show doesn't do that? Not to mention, these villains have another problem: a lack of creativity. The drug also affects people's powers, making them more unstable and powerful. It could be the opportunity to show new sides of the powers and transformations, which are always popular among anime fans. Instead, the villains always just become a giant version of their normal selves. It's a disappointing and lazy design work. In contrast, Knuckleduster's story is handled very well. It's the best thing about MHA: Vigilantes. He doesn't have powers, making us question why he cares so much about helping people. With that alone, his views on justice already become way more interesting. And he also has an important connection to the Trigger drug, which helps keep us engaged in the plot. He brings all the action, suspense, and even emotion viewers could want from a show like this. Unfortunately, his screen time isn't long enough to save the whole series. However, more unfortunate than that is knowing we can't say the same thing about the other main characters. Koichi and Pop don't need the same amount of development, as the show can focus on them in later seasons. Still, it barely establishes anything about them besides basic personality traits. Koichi is the protagonist, but he has almost no highlights in this season. To say more, if you excluded him from the plot, the most important points of the story would still play out similarly. He wants to be a hero more than anything and has a pure desire to help people. In the first few episodes, we see the lengths he would go to prove that. However, he never goes that far again and becomes sort of a comic relief. Meanwhile, Pop☆Step has no reason to even be there, and the anime can't convince you she has one. There's one episode in which the citizens talk about each vigilante, and every one of them reduces her to her body or having a revealing outfit (quick reminder that she's about 14, which makes it even worse). Anime often has problems creating a good female character for trios, and this is true for Vigilantes. However, unlike Naruto or Attack on Titan, only one member of the team can be seen as well-written. My Hero Academia: Vigilantes has potential, but it seems it refuses to do anything interesting with it. So, we end up with just another forgettable spin-off that fails at almost everything.
