Felt a very rare sense of pain after seeing this; a languid stream of stillness that moves at pace, yet hollows me out entirely. To live is truly to bear patiently, to mourn collectively for the suffering of others.
A film that seems to build in memory. I do wonder when I’d see this again.
Will I ever be able to watch this without sobbing into the red napkins I accidentally stole from my old choir director’s christmas party 3 years ago which I stashed away in the corner of my room to explicitly use when watching In the Mood for Love on a rainy day? I frankly don’t know
My grandma has fond memories of cramping into her neighbour's cloistered apartment in Hà Nội every Sunday night at 7pm, to watch TV. On her street, this neighbour was the only one who owned a TV, he would invite everyone on the street to come over on Sunday, as going to the cinema was a luxury available only to few. In his apartment, around 30 people would sit — elders on chairs, their children on the floor and on each…
Wong Kar Wai's auteurist expressions are impressively consistent throughout his films, and Chungking Express is no exception — an incurably romantic narrative that favours ellipses, fragmented voices, and a spectrum of aesthetic sensibilities that happily accommodates the avant-garde alongside the popular. There is a sense of evanescence, and stillness, between these “what might have been" moments. The film does not seek to "remember" so much as to improvise creatively from a range of loosely linked impressions and chance encounters — exponents of a signature nostalgic cinema that seeks to hold on.
