BUY TICKETS HERE
You’re invited to a screening of Wong Kar Wai’s breakthrough 1994 hyper-kinetic tale of romantic longing, “Chungking Express,” at 1 p.m. Sunday April 20th.
The whiplash, double-pronged “Chungking Express” is one of the defining works of nineties cinema and the film that made Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai an instant icon. Two heartsick Hong Kong cops (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung), both jilted by ex-lovers, cross paths at the Midnight Express take-out restaurant stand, where the ethereal pixie waitress Faye (Faye Wong) works.
Anything goes in Wong’s gloriously shot and utterly unexpected charmer, which cemented the sex appeal of its gorgeous stars and forever turned canned pineapple and the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” into tokens of romantic longing.
“For my money, Wong Kar Wai is one of the most exciting filmmakers that has come out since I’ve personally been making films. His movies have a level of excitement that’s different from American films, like the majority of Hong Kong films. But his are a little bit different.
“I saw “Chungking Express” when I was with “Pulp Fiction” at a festival in Stockholm. It just blew me away. I just absolutely adored it. I love romantic films and this movie had this wonderful romantic-comedy element to it while at the same time being encapsulated in this crazy, frenetic Hong Kong world, which is wild. Wong Kar Wai has all the frantic energy of a John Woo or Ringo Lam but he’s also taking a cue from the sense of fun of the French New Wave films of the late 1950s and early 1960s.” — Quentin Tarantino
Tickets are $6 (including service charge) and available at link above. UM students use code UMSTUDENT at checkout for free admission (must show Cane card at the door.)
