Unlike the films that immediately precede it and succeed it, Chungking Express is not a period film, and differs from As Tears Go By (1988) in that it does not fall neatly into the niche of either a contemporary gangster film or a contemporary love story. Chungking is far more nromalized in its content: a sure sign of a director finding his confidence in creating the kinds of grey areas of genre he had so fiercely sought to do from the very start. The film itself is an experience of sheer joy and exuberance, an expression of the loneliness of big city life and the ways in which humans try to make contact with each other with little to no avail, all to the swinging melody of California Dreamin’. Wong’s chief inspiration for Chungking Express
