The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Wong Kar-wai · a film · 1994 · the Hong Kong theatrical cut, about 102 minutes · in Cantonese, with passages in Mandarin, English, Japanese and Hindi
Mode
A diptych of near-loves: a noir sketch handed over at a snack bar to a romantic comedy, both told in voiceover that keeps time to the hour
Mythos
The femme fatale in a blonde wig and dark glasses, cited as costume; the household spirit who remakes a life before she is seen; policemen with numbers for names
Phase
Two stories in succession, the first a single chase and a single night, the second a run of days at one counter and in one flat; joined by a passing moment
Presentation
Feature film in colour, about 102 minutes; two stories with separate casts, a shared snack bar, handheld and step-printed images, pop songs used as structure
Register
Light, quick and rueful; neon, fluorescent green and the yellow of the snack bar; a song played loud enough to drown the customers
Scale
Two policemen, three women, one counter, a city of passage three years before the handover
Governing Proposition
Two policemen in Hong Kong, each alone after a love, each nearly finds another: the first spends a night in a hotel room with a stranger in a blonde wig who is running heroin, the second is courted, before he knows it, by the girl at the snack bar who lets herself into his flat. The stories are told one after the other and never interwoven, joined by one counter and one moment in which a man brushes past a woman. The wager of the film is that in a crowded city of transit love arrives sideways, through objects, routines and trespass, and that a form of two near misses can make a viewer see every stranger in the frame as another film.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The film opens at a run. A woman in a blonde wig, a raincoat and dark glasses moves through Chungking Mansions, a building of traders and migrants, and a policeman runs through it after someone else. The camera is handheld and the image is step-printed, so that the crowd smears into streaks of colour and neon while one figure stays sharp inside it. In the first minutes the film has shown its way of seeing: a city of passage in which almost everyone is weather, and two people, for a moment, are not.
Wong Kar-wai wrote and directed the film, and made it quickly, in about two months, during a pause in the post-production of Ashes of Time (1994). Christopher Doyle photographed it, chiefly the second story, and Andrew Lau Wai-keung chiefly the first. William Chang Suk-ping designed and edited it, with Kai Kit-wai and Kwong Chi-leung; the music is by Frankie Chan and Roel A. García, beside the songs that do so much of the film’s work. Jet Tone produced it, and it was released in Hong Kong in July 1994. Its Chinese title is 重慶森林, Chung Hing sam lam.
The speed of the making is part of the manner. The images are taken on the street, the voiceover is casual and exact about the hour, and the film has the air of something caught rather than built. It is in Cantonese, with passages in Mandarin, English, Japanese and Hindi, the languages of a port. The cast is Brigitte Lin as the woman in the wig, Takeshi Kaneshiro as Cop 223, He Qiwu, Tony Leung Chiu-wai as Cop 663, Faye Wong as Faye and Valerie Chow as the air hostess. The policemen are known by their numbers.
Movement II
Cop 223 buys tins of pineapple that all expire on one date, and makes the date the term of a love. It is the film’s emblem, love dated like tinned food, and the voiceover keeps the count. The woman in the blonde wig is running heroin with a party of Indian couriers. Her story is noir, and the film wears it as costume: the wig, the raincoat and the dark glasses are a figure from a Hollywood the film admires, cited rather than rebuilt.
The plot of the first story exists to bring the two strangers to one night in a hotel room. What the night holds is the condition the whole film discloses, that love in this city arrives sideways and at the wrong time. The woman in the wig shoots the dealer who betrayed her, and the noir runs to its end on the rules of its genre. Dennis Brown’s “Things in Life” belongs to this half.
This half is the film’s weakness. The heroin run, the couriers and the chase are a genre exercise whose plot runs on rules the rest of the film ignores, its action loosely staged and its writing thinner. Much of it could be shortened without loss, and the second story does not need its shape. It is a sketch, quick and handsome, and it stands as the film’s first proof of method: the smear of the crowd, the sharp figure inside it, the voiceover that tells the time. What it proves, the second story will build.
Movement III
One snack bar, the Midnight Express, holds both stories. In a passing moment at its counter the first policeman brushes past the woman who will carry the second, and the film changes hands. The stories are told one after the other and never interwoven; the counter and that one brush are the whole of the join. It is necessary in idea, a film of near misses joined by a near miss, and slight in fact. The second story would stand alone. The first would not.
Cop 663 stands at the counter, still, while the crowd streaks past him. The air hostess, played by Valerie Chow, is gone from his life, and he talks to the things in his flat, to a bar of soap and a towel, as though they could answer. A key in an envelope comes to the snack bar, and through it to Faye, who works behind the counter. The film’s second story is built from such objects carrying feeling between two people who never manage to speak at the right time.
The diptych is the instrument. Two near-loves, the second beginning in the moment the first brushes past it, teach the viewer that any stranger in the frame could carry another film. Told as one interwoven plot, the story would become a romantic comedy; told in succession, it becomes a way of seeing a city. The form states its knowledge by juxtaposition more than it builds it, and the first half’s shape is partly arbitrary. But the hinge holds: the change of story is a change of rules as well as of people, and the snack bar, with its counter and its light, is common ground for both.
Movement IV
Faye plays “California Dreamin’” behind the counter, again and again, at a volume that drowns every customer, and dances to it. The song is not a score laid over the film; it is a structure inside it, repeated as obsession repeats. Faye Wong’s Cantonese cover of the Cranberries’ “Dreams” returns the same way. The film’s summits are of this kind: moments of transport in the register of a pop song, warm and light, of delight and ache rather than of terror or grandeur, and they come often.
With the key she lets herself into 663’s flat while he is out. She cleans it and changes its creatures and its things: the goldfish, the labels on his tins, his soap. He notices the flat changing before he notices her. Faye rides the hillside escalator past his window. Her trespass is the film’s strongest figure: close to the household spirit of folktale, the visitor who remakes a life before she is seen, and load-bearing in this story as no other pattern is. Whether it is love, play or violation the film leaves open.
Faye dances in the empty flat she has let herself into, and the image answers the first story’s gun: people alone in a city act on feeling through objects and routines. Tony Leung’s 663 is quiet and rueful, a man slow to see what is in front of him; Faye Wong’s Faye has a charm more controlled than it looks. The figures stay charming, specific and small. That is the film’s grace, and it is also what keeps its myth evoked rather than built, and its disclosure a mood more than an argued meaning.
Movement V
The near miss is the second story’s shape too. A boarding pass drawn on a napkin is given, and it returns. At the close the two are at the counter again, an exchange over a napkin, the music returning. The film ends on a beginning that may not happen, and it ends lightly, which is its manner: the last summit is a small one, held in a snack bar, as the first was held in a crowd.
The film carried Wong to international attention, and Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder label released it in America. Its look and method are visible in Sofia Coppola and Barry Jenkins, in a generation of music video and advertising, and Doyle’s handheld style became a common idiom. Some of that reach is the borrowing of a surface rather than a redirection of the art, and part of it belongs to Wong’s later films, among them In the Mood for Love (2000). The film has stayed in view for thirty-two years, in repertory and on home video, in a Criterion edition and in teaching, and it was restored in 2021 under Wong’s supervision, with the colour regraded.
It is still argued over: whether the expiry dates read as the handover, which the film permits and does not insist on; whether the two halves are one argument or two sketches; what the migrants at the edges of the first story are doing in a film of Chinese lovers. Its pagers, fashions and pop are those of 1994, and some viewers now watch them as period. What holds it in Tier III and not in Tier IV is plain: its myth is cited more than made, its truth is felt more than stated, its first half is a sketch, and it holds a city’s solitude without opening the city. What has lasted is a way of seeing: a crowd smeared to weather, two people sharp inside it, and love dated like tinned food.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on structure. The second story resists the subtractive test: the key in the envelope, the goldfish, the tins with their labels swapped, the soap and the towel 663 talks to, the boarding pass drawn on a napkin are each planted and returned, and the story is built of objects carrying feeling between two people who never speak at the right time. The first story gives far more. Its heroin run, its couriers and its blonde wig are a noir sketch whose plot exists to bring two strangers to one night in a hotel room, and much of it could be shortened without loss. The join is necessary in idea and slight in fact: the second story would stand alone, and the first would not. The rhymes are real; the diptych is permitted by the method rather than compelled by it.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, though only in part: in a crowded city of transit love arrives sideways, through objects, routines and trespass, and intimacy is a matter of timing more than of will. The policeman buying tins of pineapple that all expire on one date, and the woman who reorders a man’s flat so that he learns of her before he sees her, give the condition a body. The image discloses it fully: the step-printed smear of the crowd, two figures sharp inside it and everyone else a blur. The city, three years before the handover, is present as a place of passage, of the traders and migrants of Chungking Mansions and the bars of Lan Kwai Fong. But the film rests on mood, loneliness rendered beautifully more than a condition articulated and argued, and mood stands below meaning.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The elevation is warm and light, and it comes often. Faye behind the counter dancing to “California Dreamin’” at a volume that drowns every customer; the first chase through Chungking Mansions, a rush of colour and neon in smeared handheld images; 663 at the counter, still, while the crowd streaks past him; Faye riding the hillside escalator past his window; the last exchange over a napkin at the counter, with the music returning. These are moments of transport in the register of a pop song, and the film knows it. Height is what holds the figure: the film never reaches terror or grandeur, and its summits are of delight and ache rather than of the kind that change what a viewer can bear. Frequent rises, moderate height.
Score: 7.9 / 10
The myth is mostly evoked. The woman in the blonde wig, raincoat and dark glasses is the femme fatale of noir cited as costume, a figure from a Hollywood the film admires. Faye, entering a man’s home unseen, cleaning it and changing its creatures, is close to the household spirit of folktale, the visitor who remakes a life before she is seen; that pattern is load-bearing in the second story, and it is the strongest claim here. The numbers in place of names and the expiry date on love are emblems rather than myth. Nothing makes these particular figures archetypal: they stay charming, specific and small, which is the film’s grace and this axis’s limit. In the Mood for Love, at 8.8 here, builds the archetype this film evokes.
Score: 7.0 / 10
The inheritance is the Hong Kong commercial cinema of the early 1990s, the cop film, the triad thriller, the romantic comedy, and the French New Wave, Godard above all, whose casual narration and pop citations Wong takes up; Breathless, at 9.3 here, made the manner this film renews. The turns are real: a film split into two unconnected stories, linked by a place and a passing; the crime story abandoned midway for a romance; step-printed handheld images that make motion itself smear; pop songs used not as score but as repeated structure; voiceover that tells time to the hour. The stake was mixed. It was a quick film, shot on the streets in about two months, with bankable stars and little money at risk. The wager on form was large for a commercial picture; the cost of failure was not.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Change the form and the film loses what it knows, which is that people in a city pass each other by inches and minutes. The diptych is the instrument: two near-loves, the second beginning in the moment the first brushes past it, so that the viewer learns that any stranger in the frame could carry another film. The voiceover’s precision about time, the expiry dates and the numbers instead of names belong to it; so does the step-printing in which the lovers are sharp and the crowd is weather, and the songs that loop as obsession loops. Told as one interwoven plot it would become a romantic comedy. Held below the top because the first story’s form is partly arbitrary, a genre exercise whose shape the second does not need, and because the diptych states its knowledge by juxtaposition more than it builds it.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Evidence over thirty-two years: the film is still rewatched, taught and written on, in the light of Wong’s body of work, of Hong Kong before 1997, of Christopher Doyle’s camera, and of the cinema of urban solitude. The questions stay open: whether the expiry dates read as the handover, a reading the film permits but does not insist on; whether Faye’s trespass is love, play or violation; whether the two halves are one argument or two sketches; what the migrants at the edges of the first story are doing in a film of Chinese lovers. The rhymes between the halves keep yielding on return. Held at the figure because much of the return is sensory, a mood revisited rather than a meaning deepened, and a good part of the writing on it is about style.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Released in 1994, so force and reach are scored together, and the field is the cinema of the 1990s. The intrinsic force is a new grammar of urban romance made from speed, step-printing, voiceover and repetition, and the showing that a film could be built from moods and objects held together by place and chance. It reorganised a manner of filmmaking more than what film could do. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: it carried Wong to international attention, Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder label released it in America, its look and method are visible in Sofia Coppola, Barry Jenkins and a generation of music video and advertising, and Doyle’s handheld style became a common idiom. Some of that reach is the borrowing of a surface, and part of it belongs to Wong’s later films.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Weighed on form, presence, then fabric, across thirty-two years. The film as released survives whole, restored more than once and never lost. Its presence has been continuous and wide: festival and repertory screenings, home video in every format, a Criterion edition, international teaching, and the theatrical circulation of the 2021 restoration. A span of thirty-two years sets it at the foot of what such an age allows. Two charges stand. The 2021 restoration, supervised by Wong, regraded the colour, so the image now in circulation differs from the image of 1994: a small alteration, but a real one. And the surface is fixed to its moment, the pagers, the fashions and the pop of 1994 Hong Kong, which some viewers now watch as period.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The making bears weight: the step-printed and slow-shutter handheld images, shot on the street at speed by Doyle and Andrew Lau Wai-keung; the colour, neon, fluorescent green and the yellow of the snack bar; William Chang Suk-ping’s cutting, which moves with the voiceover’s sense of time; the placing of the songs; and the performances, Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s quiet and rueful 663 and Faye Wong’s Faye, whose charm is more controlled than it looks. Made in weeks, the film shows little of its speed. The charges: the first story is thinner in writing and its action is loosely staged; some of the voiceover is cute rather than exact; the joins between the halves are casual by design and sometimes merely casual. Very fine work, short of a making load-bearing throughout.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the woman in the blonde wig shooting the dealer who betrayed her, in the first story, and Faye dancing in an empty flat she has let herself into, in the second. One law governs both: people alone in a city act on feeling through objects and routines, with time measured to the hour and love dated like tinned food. The noir and the comedy obey the same physics of chance and near miss, and the snack bar holds both. The range is moderate, wide in genre and narrow in feeling, from a drug run to a light romance. The strain shows in the first story, whose crime plot runs on genre rules the film otherwise ignores, and at the hinge, where the change of story is a change of rules as much as of people.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Judged on what a film of about a hundred minutes holds. Consciousness, in the voiceovers of two policemen; the city, in Chungking Mansions, Lan Kwai Fong, the escalator and the snack bar; labour, in police work, the counter and the airline; trade and migration, at the edges, in the couriers and the traders of the Mansions; history, faintly, in the approach of 1997. They are joined in one sensibility rather than one structure: the city is the ground of the lovers’ solitude, not a society the film opens. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is what is absent: the family is missing, the state is a uniform, and the sacred and the natural order do not appear. Two near-romances in a short film describe the form: above the floor, low on the scale.
Score: 6.6 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.8 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.5, then Pressure on Tradition and The Made at 8.3, and The Swerve at 8.2. A film that survives whole after thirty-two years, continuously shown, taught and restored; a new grammar of urban romance made from speed, step-printing, voiceover and repetition, whose look became a common idiom; a making in which camera, colour, cutting, songs and performances bear weight; and a turn that split a commercial picture into two unconnected stories joined by a passing.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.6: the city, consciousness, labour, migration and history faintly held in one sensibility rather than one structure, with the family absent, the state a uniform, and the sacred and the natural order out of view. Above it, The Archetypal Deep at 7.0: the femme fatale cited as costume and the policemen as emblems, with only Faye’s household spirit load-bearing. Then The Inevitable and The Unconcealment at 7.6: a first story much of which could be shortened without loss, and a disclosure rendered more as mood than as argued meaning.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.6 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.1, The Made at 8.3, The Inner Law at 8.0, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 8.5 meets the bar of 8.5 exactly, but Pressure on Tradition at 8.3, The Swerve at 8.2, The Unconcealment at 7.6 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.0 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Archetypal Deep, 7.0, below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.6. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.8, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Chungking Express (Chung Hing sam lam, 重慶森林) as released in Hong Kong in July 1994, the Hong Kong theatrical cut, about 102 minutes, from the chase through Chungking Mansions to the last exchange at the counter: written and directed by Wong Kar-wai, produced by Jet Tone, photographed by Christopher Doyle and Andrew Lau Wai-keung, designed and edited by William Chang Suk-ping with Kai Kit-wai and Kwong Chi-leung, with music by Frankie Chan and Roel A. García. Listings give the running time as anything from 98 to 103 minutes, and the figure here is approximate. The 2021 restoration supervised by Wong regraded the colour; the film of 1994 is the object, and the restoration bears on The Imperishable only. No print, script or subtitle file was consulted. Every axis is judged on the original film, in Cantonese with passages in Mandarin, English, Japanese and Hindi; English subtitles are a reader’s aid rather than the object, and nothing here is charged to them. No line of dialogue is quoted, since no line’s exact words could be certified, and speech is given in substance; songs are named by title alone. Scenes are described at the level of the film’s principal images. Facts that could not be verified, among them whether any other cut has circulated, whether the American release was complete, whether the restoration altered anything beyond the colour, the share of the running time each story takes, the shot count and the average shot length, are not given.