J. M. Tyree at the New England Review:
Celebrating film anniversaries always seems ephemeral, but when a film has been part of your life for three decades, there are good reasons to pause, rewind, review, and reassess both the film and your memories of it. You notice new things. The movie’s changed, you’ve changed, and the world has changed. Revisiting Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express on the thirtieth anniversary of its release in 1994, I rediscovered a film that is itself obsessed with dates and numbers. Expiration dates on tins of pineapple. Police badge numbers. Distances between people brushing past one another in crowded markets.
It isn’t necessary to know the movie’s plot before reading this collection of creative writers, who I asked to respond to Chungking Express at age thirty using any genre, length, or style they preferred. If you watch or rewatch the film, you’ll see actors who look good in their work clothes sharing meals and attempting to connect, chasing dreams of love that always fall just out of their reach, living in a painful and gorgeous world designed to separate everyone and wreck the timing of their yearnings.
more here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.