Wong Kar Wai's comments on 'Chungking Express', from interview with City Entertainment Biweekly, June 30, 1994.
"I am trying to tell two independent stories in this film. The first story involves Lin Chin Hsia and Takeshi Kaneshiro and takes place in Chungking Mansion; the second involves Faye Wong and Valerie Chow and happens in Central. I have quite a few stories that I wanted to film but never got round to. And there are two places that particularly intrigued me. One: Tsim Sha Tsui. I grew up in that area and I have a lot of feelings about it. It's an area where the Chinese literally brush shoulders with westerners, and is uniquely Hong Kong. Inside Chungking Mansion you can run into people of all races and nationalities: Chinese, white people, black people, Indian. And two: the escalator from Central to the Mid-levels. That interests me because no one has made a movie there. When we were scouting for locations we found the light there entirely appropriate."
"Like I say, the two stories are quite independent. What puts them together is that they are both love stories. I think a lot of city people have a lot of emotions but sometimes they can't find the people to express them to. That's something the characters in the film share. Tony talks to a bar of soap; Faye steals into Tony's home and gets satisfaction from arranging other people's stuff; and Takeshi has his pineapples. They all project their emotions on certain objects. Only the Lin Chin Hsia's character does not have any emotions. She has to keep working. To her, survival is more important that emotions. She's like an animal, roving in Chungking Mansion like it was a jungle [the literal translation of the film's original title is Chungking Jungle]."
"I kept developing the story when I was shooting. That's how I worked with 'Days of Being Wild', but this time I really went to extremes. 'Chungkng Express' has a lot of night scenes, so a lot of times we shot in the evening. Then I'd go back to work on the story during the day. The story developed in relation to the actors and the environment. In the end, it doesn't matter if I started with a script or a cast. Long as you have a story, and there actors, the story will find its own course."
Realm | Personal | Favourites | Pandora's Box | Field Signals | Eudaemonia | River Styx | Photo Gallery | Guestbook | Links | Epilogue