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SRIVATHSA SUBRAMANIAN SIVAKUMAR

Movie: Chungking Express

Cast: Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Valerie Chow

Anyone who knows director Kar Wai Wong, knows about his visual versatility. In “Chungking Express” (1994), he expands the liberty of his cinematic colour palette, to a newer boundary, smearing it all over and playing with the frame numbers. The motion and colour at the display in the “Chungking Express” is expressionistic and justly furnished with Kar Wai Wong’s poetic, surrealistic story telling.

The story

“Chungking Express” features two sternly unlinked story lines, split into two parts of the movie. The first part deals with a cop (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who has just broken up with his long time girlfriend. His tins of pineapple, act as his representation of love expiration or love renewal. The second part has again a cop, but another one (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), who is trying to triumph over his breakup with his girlfriend, an air attendant. He meets another girl at a local hang out counter. All of the plots overwhelmingly inhale the colours of life and Kar Wai Wong’s direction is a distraction less creation of vivid characters, epitomising their own desperate lives.

The colour and flavour

Abstract moments, discrete scenarios, colour bleached chases and dreamy soundtrack, alluringly propel the movie. It is not a new territory for the director, but of all the wide spectrum of hyper-talented Asian directors, Kar Wai Wong’s movie uses cinematography, perspicaciously and the beauty is as prominent as neon lights in the street culture of night time Hong Kong. Wong’s obsessive innovations, expressively take us into a world of motions that transform the world into a new stylistic plane of cinematic fervour. The actors are apt. The screenplay acts as a blind metaphor to infuriating look at the frustrating life of the characters. But, the blossoming relationships make the movie, much more than the visual splendour.

The movie embarrasses pain, love and humour with such ease and essence that at the end of the movie, even when one might feel slightly dizzy, they are unknowingly intoxicated. Kar Wai Wong, takes total control of the tone, mood and expressionistic theme; he endorses each frame with his contemporary Hong Kong New Wave methods; Takes us for a ride and delivers it with much of a memorable dream like ambience. “Chungking Express” is a colourful, masterful vision, to be felt, rather than just watched.

SRIVATHSA SUBRAMANIAN SIVAKUMAR, software professional.

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