重慶森林 - Chungking Express

"Change of flight. Your plane cancelled. Here's your key. Bye."Air Hostess

☆☆☆☆☆ Classic 

重慶森林 - Chungking Express (1994) is beautiful poem to love.

Directed by Wong Kar Wai.


Starring, Faye Wong, Brigitte Lin, Valerie Chow, Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Takeshi Kaneshiro among many others.


Wong's film about love reminds me of Jean-Luc Godard's masterpiece, A Bout de Souffle - Breathless (1960) . Kar Wai was inspired by Godard and his use of Jump Cuts, montages, unique camera angles and plots that meander. I love the way love is expressed throughout the film silently by characters as they remember their lovers by objects they still possess. According to Quentin Tarantino in his video comments on the film below, Wong intended to have three stories. Instead he made the third story into a film called, Fallen Angels (1995). Personally, I would have made each story of the two remaining stories into separate films. Kar Wai tends to focus more on one story when he has to deal with more than one storyline. This can be seen in both the stronger last story here and with his recent visual masterpiece, The Grandmaster (2013) in which two stories are intertwined to muted outcomes. The remaining two stories in Chungking Express do not suffer and are brilliant in their own rights, but I would have like to have seen the two stories on their own.

Watch in the scene below how each character is immersed silently in their own deep thoughts reflecting upon the emotions that love drowns them in, while life moves fast forward before them in the foreground. What a brilliant, imaginative way to capture our selfish, egocentric inner life in the midsts of the entire human cosmos.

Film Scene

Trivia - Christopher Doyle's apartment was used in the film as the dwelling for cop 663.

Film Trailer

Tarantino Discusses Chungking Express #1

Tarantino Discusses Chungking Express #2

Film Photos - Posters

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Film Transcript

Note - If you would like to view Chungking Express to rent or buy please click on the link below the comments. It is sponsored by Google, so it is the safest and most secure way to get a copy for your film library.

Pierrot Le Fou - Pierrot the Madman

"You speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings." Marianne

☆☆☆☆☆ Masterpiece 


Pierrot Le Fou - Pierrot the Madman (1965) is a ravishing, unmissable masterpiece of celluloid escapism.


Directed By Jean-Luc Godard.


Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina and Graziella Galvani among others.

Godard said of Pierrot Le Fou that "it is not really a film, it's an attempt at cinema. Life is the subject, with Cinemascope and color as its attributes...In short, life filling the screen as a tap fills bathtub that is simultaneously emptying at the same rate." I put Godard's quote about Pierrot Le Fou, so that you could understand the film as I was able to comprehend what Jean-Luc was trying to say cinematically. The beauty of Godard's film is that you forget about the story, plot and narrative. A scene may or may not finish, scenes may or may not follow each other, but therein lies the artistry of Godard.  Jean-Luc is basically creating an aesthetic look and feel to his film. Kind of like saying Cary Grant was suave and debonair character. Grant was a great actor, but like Godard, they both are at their core stylish, smooth and accomplished artists. Pierrot was the pinnacle of Godard's mastery of his cinematic art and craft as the Mona Lisa the crowning glory to Leonardo Di Vinci mastery of paint and brush.

The scene below starts off as a simple scene with Anna making breakfast for Jean-Paul. Then I started noticing that Karina keeps looking at something near her. Finally, we see its a dead man on a bed and she calmly goes about getting Belmondo's breakfast and leaves the room. The scene has no meaning, it sends the plot out the window and yet it leaves you thinking about the dead body on her bed. Godard's dead body in Pierrot Le Fou is like Luis Buñuel's rocking chair in Belle de Jour - Beauty of the Day (1967) in that they were meant to inform their audiences that film like life introduces things that can change the story or plot and not make sense.

Film Scene

Trivia - The American film director Samuel Fuller is in the party scene.

Film Trailer

Film Photos - Posters

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Film Transcript

Note - If you would like to view Pierrot Le Fou - Pierrot the Madman  to rent or buy please click on the link below the comments. It is sponsored by Google, so it is the safest and most secure way to get a copy for your film library.