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Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong's only director of "art" films finally spins out a winner. Two HK cops, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung, search for love in a disconcerting urban world with lots of jerk-motion photography and no establishing shots. Kaneshiro falls for dope smuggler Brigitte Lin (hidden somewhere behind a blond wig and sunglasses), who mows down her enemies with aplomb (actually, a gun). Leung is crazy about an airline stewardess who's no longer in love with him, so he spends his time moping in his apartment, playing with model airplanes and having dialogues with a selection of stuffed toys, cabinets, aquarium fish, dishrags, soap, himself -- basically, anything that'll listen. Brigitte Lin appears for the first half of the film, then vanishes for some undisclosed reason; her scenes chasing down the Arab co-conspirators who swindled her are filmed in an indescribable sort of thrilling jerk-motion I've never seen duplicated. Ectomorphic Faye Wong (who bears more than a slight resemblance to Lin) is cute as the Chungking Express counter girl who listens to "California Dreaming" over and over (the audience hears it seven times), falls in love with Tony Leung, gets his apartment keys and cleans up, putters around. The movie may not have not have much in the way of a straightforward moral per se, but it's a surprisingly unoppressive treatment of lives and loves out of synch. A movie about nostalgia for lost love suddenly becomes a tribute to a special time and place in HK history. Of course, making a film about disconnected city existence is a great excuse for an incoherent plot line, crazed visuals, and editing from beneath the dungeons of Chinese hell; but dammit, for once the gimmicks work -- and it doesn't hurt having the cutest babes and in-demand adonises inflated HK bucks can buy. Apparently, Wong produced and directed the film rather quickly (in a hiatus of his dreadful martial arts epic, The Ashes of Time); as a result, it turns out something like a cinematic Rorschach blot, where everyone is likely to take home a different message. But that doesn't stop it from being a real charmer, and something of a minor classic.

.... An excellent work of genius. Possibly Wrong Kar Wai's best film, picking up numerous Hong Kong Film Awards.