
He developed a third story, about a love-sick hitman, but as he felt it would make Chungking Express overlong, he produced it as a separate film, Fallen Angels (1995). He wrote the second story in a single day. The screenplay was not finished by the time filming began Wong finished it when filming paused over New Year. He felt that "despite the difference, they are the same stories": one was about encountering love in the tight city, the other was about the keeping love without physical connection. He said "While I had nothing to do, I decided to make Chungking Express following my instincts," and that "After the very heavy stuff, heavily emphasized in Ashes of Time, I wanted to make a very light, contemporary movie, but where the characters had the same problems." Originally, Wong envisioned the stories as similar but with contrasting settings: one in Hong Kong Island in daylight, and the other in Kowloon at night. Wong Kar-wai made Chungking Express during a two-month break from the editing of his wuxia film Ashes of Time. The departure hall of the former Kai Tak Airport is featured in the film

Leung Sun as the second May, who works at the Midnight Express.


She leaves him a boarding pass drawn on a paper napkin dated one year later.įaye, now a flight attendant, returns to Hong Kong. Faye does not arrive, and the snack bar owner, her cousin, goes to the restaurant to tell him that Faye has left for the US state of California. He finds Faye coming to his apartment and realizes that she likes him he arranges a date at a restaurant named California. Faye uses the keys to repeatedly enter the man's apartment to clean and redecorate. She learns he is on his day off and leaves a letter for him with the snack bar owner containing a set of keys to the officer's apartment.įaye tells him of the letter, but he delays reading it and asks the snack bar to keep it for him. One day, the flight attendant visits the store and waits for the man. He visits his usual snack food store where he collides with a new staff member, Faye.Īnother police officer is also dealing with a breakup-with a flight attendant. Qiwu goes jogging and receives a message from her on his pager wishing him a happy birthday. She leaves in the morning and shoots the drug baron who set her up. He shines her shoes before he leaves her sleeping on the bed. However, she is exhausted and falls asleep in a hotel room, leaving him to watch old films and order food.

On 1 May, Qiwu approaches the woman in the blonde wig at the Bottoms Up Club. Meanwhile, a woman in a blonde wig tries to survive in the drug underworld after a smuggling operation goes sour. Every day he buys a tin of pineapples with an expiration date of 1 May, because May enjoyed pineapples. To verify her earnestness in breaking up with him, Qiwu chooses to wait for a month. Taiwan-raised cop He Qiwu is dumped by his girlfriend named May on 1 April.
