Chungking Express (1994) Review – A Review of the Second Story, Drifting Through Light
Header illustration for the film review essay of Chungking Express (1994).
Illustration created for editorial movie review purposes.
๐ฅ Film Overview
Original Title: ้ๆ ถๆฃฎๆ (Chungking Express)
Director: Wong Kar-wai
Release: July 14, 1994 (Hong Kong)
Runtime: 102 minutes (1 hour 42 minutes)
Genre: Romance, Drama, Art Film
Screenplay: Wong Kar-wai
Cinematography: Christopher Doyle, Andrew Lau
Country: Hong Kong Rating: PG-13
Rotten Tomatoes: 89% (Critics), 89% (Audience)
IMDb: 8.0/10 Box Office: HK$7.68 million (Hong Kong)
Awards: Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), Best Film nomination
Cast (Second Story Focus): Tony Leung Chiu-wai (Cop 663), Faye Wong (Faye), Valerie Chow (Air Hostess)
๐ Plot Summary
Chungking Express tells two separate stories set in Hong Kong's bustling Tsim Sha Tsui district, both revolving around lonely policemen and the women who briefly enter their lives.
The second story—the one that lingers longest in memory—follows Cop 663 (Tony Leung), whose girlfriend, an air hostess, has just left him. She doesn't explain why. She simply leaves a breakup letter at the Midnight Express snack bar where he stops every night after his shift.
Faye (Faye Wong), who works at the snack bar, receives the letter but doesn't give it to him immediately. Instead, she becomes quietly fascinated by this heartbroken man who doesn't yet know he's been left. She watches him order his usual chef's salad. She notices his routines, his quiet sadness.
Then Faye does something strange: she gets a copy of his apartment key and begins sneaking into his home while he's at work. But she doesn't steal. She cleans. She rearranges furniture. She replaces his expired items. She leaves small traces of care—a new bar of soap, fresh towels, a stuffed animal by his bed—as if trying to tend to his life from the margins.
Cop 663 notices these changes but attributes them to the objects themselves. He talks to his apartment—to the towel, the soap, the stuffed toy—asking them why they've changed, why they seem different. He doesn't realize someone has been there.
Eventually, Faye and Cop 663 begin tentative conversations at the snack bar. They never quite say what they mean. Timing is always slightly off. When he's ready to talk, she's distracted. When she wants to invite him somewhere, he doesn't understand.
The film doesn't build toward dramatic confession or clear resolution. Instead, it drifts—through days, through seasons, through the rhythms of two people orbiting each other, never quite landing.
๐ธ Key Themes
Atmosphere Over Narrative
Chungking Express doesn't ask you to follow a plot closely. It invites you to inhabit a feeling. The film moves like memory—associative, impressionistic, guided by mood rather than logic.
Wong Kar-wai uses neon-lit Hong Kong streets, the repetitive loop of "California Dreamin'" and Faye Wong's "Dreams," and handheld cameras that blur as if mimicking distraction. This suggests that sometimes what we need isn't clarity—it's permission to drift.
Love in Silence
Faye never tells Cop 663 she's been entering his apartment. He never asks who's caring for his space. Their connection exists in unspoken gestures—her quiet tending, his gradual emergence from grief.
The film understands that some care happens in silence. Faye's actions aren't grand gestures—they're small acts of attention: noticing sadness, tending surroundings, holding space without demanding recognition.
Timing That Never Aligns
The central tension isn't conflict—it's timing. When Cop 663 is heartbroken, Faye is just noticing him. When he's ready, she's uncertain. They keep missing each other through ordinary asynchrony.
The film treats this not as tragedy but as life—the way people often want each other at different moments.
Learning to Let Light Back In
Cop 663's journey is about slowly opening to possibility. The film shows tiny shifts: he stops talking to his apartment, notices Faye, begins to smile. Faye's journey mirrors this—learning through caring for his space how to care for someone, and eventually, how to let someone care for her.
๐ฌ What Makes This Film Special
Wong Kar-wai's Visual Style and Music
Wong shoots with handheld cameras, step-printing (creating stuttering, dreamlike motion), and extreme close-ups. You're close to characters but never quite able to grasp them fully. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle bathes Hong Kong in bleeding neon—the city becomes vibrant, lonely, overwhelming, comforting.
"California Dreamin'" plays on endless repeat. Faye Wong's cover of "Dreams" floats through scenes with detached sweetness. These songs don't just accompany—they structure the story, their repetition marking time.
Faye Wong and Cultural Impact
Pop star Faye Wong plays Faye with lightness that never feels forced—quirky but genuine. She won widespread acclaim, expanding her career beyond music.
Chungking Express became a landmark of Hong Kong cinema. Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Pictures acquired it for US distribution. The film cemented Wong Kar-wai's international reputation and remains one of the most beloved works of 1990s world cinema.
๐ Where to Watch (2025)
Streaming: The Criterion Channel, Max (HBO Max), Kanopy (library card required)
Rent/Buy: Apple TV, Amazon Video, Google Play, Criterion Collection Blu-ray
Physical Media: Available on Criterion Collection Blu-ray (restored 4K version)
Note: Availability varies by region. The Criterion restoration offers the best viewing experience with cleaned-up picture and sound.
๐ Final Thoughts
Chungking Express doesn't try to be understood. It asks to be felt. The second story, especially, resists conventional romantic structure—there's no chase, no obstacle overcome, no triumphant union.
Instead, there's drift. Two people moving through the same spaces at different rhythms, occasionally synchronized, mostly not. The film suggests this is enough. That proximity, even imperfect, creates its own meaning.
What makes the film endure is its refusal to demand resolution. Cop 663 and Faye don't need to "end up together" for their story to matter. What matters is the gentle way they occupy each other's peripheral vision, the small kindnesses exchanged, the possibility left open.
For viewers, Chungking Express offers something rare: permission to not know, to drift, to let atmosphere carry you when narrative can't. It's a film that feels like sanctuary precisely because it doesn't insist on answers.
๐ญ Personal Film Reflection
Hong Kong often feels warm—unexpectedly so. There's a familiarity in its density, a quiet kindness in its nights. This affection likely comes, at least in part, from Chungking Express.
What draws viewers to the film—especially its second story—isn't the plot. It's the atmosphere. There's a strange pull in the way the film moves, or sometimes refuses to move at all. Before the story can be followed, the mood has already absorbed us.
The music lingers first. "California Dreamin'" endlessly repeating, and Faye Wong's voice singing "Dreams"—the title doesn't even matter. What matters is how it feels: playful, lonely, gently detached. These sounds settle into the film like background light, something you don't actively notice until it's gone.
Of course, there is a story. A love that has already ended. Emotions left unspoken. Timings that never quite align. Moments filled with imagination, silence, and quiet longing.
Yet there's no compulsion to chase the narrative too closely. This film doesn't ask to be understood—it asks to be stayed with. Rather than pulling us into its events, it invites drifting alongside them, letting the atmosphere guide the experience.
The second story of Chungking Express feels less like watching a romance unfold and more like inhabiting a space where someone is slowly learning how to let light back in. Cop 663 emerges from heartbreak not through dramatic revelation but through small, almost imperceptible shifts—a conversation here, a smile there, the gradual willingness to notice someone new.
And perhaps that's why it feels like a sanctuary. Not because it offers answers, but because it allows rest in the feeling of not needing them.
When thinking about Hong Kong now, certain images arrive: the neon bleeding into rain-slicked streets, the way loneliness can feel strangely companionable, the sense that healing doesn't require destination—just gentle forward motion.
๋น์ ๋ค์ ๋ฐ์๋ค์ด๋ ๋ฒ์, ์ฒ์ฒํ ๋ฐฐ์ฐ๋ ๊ฒ์ด๋ค.
Drifting through light means learning how to let brightness return—slowly.
(A reflection in my native Korean—because some truths about light and healing feel truer in the language of your heart.)
Chungking Express gently reminds us that sometimes we don't need the story to resolve—we just need permission to drift until we're ready to land.
๐ฌ Join the Conversation
Have you experienced a film more through atmosphere than plot? What cities feel warm to you because of the films set there? How do you navigate the gap between wanting connection and not quite being ready for it? Share your thoughts below.
๐ฌ More from Cinematic Sanctuaries
If Chungking Express reminded you of atmosphere, longing, and gentle healing, explore:
- Before Sunrise (1995) – Connection without conclusion
- The Intern (2015) – Healing through presence
- Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) – Missed timing and emotional rhythm
- Bread and Soup and Cat Weather (2013) – Quiet existence as comfort
- The Great Passage (2013) – Living gently within repetition
Each film in our collection reminds us that healing comes in many forms—through atmospheres we inhabit, silences we honor, and the courage to drift until we find our way.
๐ค About the Author
Young Lee has spent years quietly collecting and sharing films that offer comfort rather than answers—stories that value atmosphere over narrative, silence over explanation, and the transformation that happens when we give ourselves permission to not understand everything. As an everyday viewer, they believe cinema can remind us that drifting is sometimes the gentlest path forward.
Read more articles from this author on Cinematic Sanctuaries.
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