My introduction to Wong Kar-wai came through Chungking Express. Then In the Mood for Love. Then 2046 and Fallen Angels.
His films are not for everyone. They’re not in English. The stories feel fragmented. Sometimes nothing much happens at all. Long silences, lingering shots, conversations left unfinished, emotions left unspoken. If you want a tight plot, you’ll spend most of it wondering what the fuss is about.
And then you rewind a scene for the third time because you can’t believe how beautiful it looks.
That’s what got me. As someone who shoots photography, I was pulled in by the cinematography before the story. I went down a YouTube rabbit hole trying to figure out what cameras and lenses Christopher Doyle used, and what came out of it was the range of what he and Wong could do together. In Chungking Express everything looks rushed, motion-blurred, alive, like the film itself can’t sit still. In the Mood for Love does the opposite. Every scene holds like a painting come to life slowly as the camera pans. Same director, same cinematographer, entirely different worlds. That kind of creative range is something the rest of us can only dream of.
Chungking Express feels alive. The frantic motion, the neon, the crowded streets of Hong Kong. Every frame looks spontaneous, like they caught something that wasn’t supposed to be caught. And then Faye Wong dances alone in Cop 663’s apartment to California Dreamin’, mouthing the words while she secretly reorganises his life without him knowing. She’s in love with him and never says it. The song says it for her.
In the Mood for Love is a different film entirely. Slow pans, narrow corridors, rain-soaked streets, glances that do more work than any dialogue could. It’s a film about two people who fall in love and do nothing about it. That restraint is the whole point, and it’s devastating. Yumeji’s Theme plays and replays throughout, that slow, aching waltz, and every time it comes back the film gets heavier. One of the most memorable scenes is the stairwell. Chow and Su pass each other on the narrow steps, no words, barely a glance, the score doing everything the two of them cannot.
I lived in China briefly, which made these films hit differently. The crowded streets, the smell of food stalls, that specific loneliness of being surrounded by millions of people and still being alone in a foreign land. In the Mood for Love captures a Hong Kong that’s mostly gone now, but watching it after having lived there felt less like a film and more like looking through someone else’s old photographs and recognising the feeling anyway.
Wong Kar-wai’s films are about what doesn’t happen. The missed chances, the half-finished conversations, the moments that stay with you precisely because nothing was resolved. Start with Chungking Express. See where it takes you.
