Favorites by Nat King Cole and the characters' live-recorded scripts sonically constructed a picture of love and lust in this film, which is considered to be one of Wong Kar-wai's best work to-date. This soundtrack is pressed on a Sensuous Forest Vinyl resembling the curtain from the apartment of Cop 663 (played by Tony Leung), yet another irresistible collection for fans of this movie. From dream pop to jazz, the music in Chungking Express not only enhanced the two seemingly unrelated stories but is also said to have broken dream pop into mainstream success in Hong Kong - the opening number by Faye Wong, a cantonese rendition of 'Dreams' by The Cranberries is a perfect example here. Random Thoughts (Cantonese version of song by The Cocteau Twins from Bluebeard) Including lyrics for the two songs in Chinese. Garcia, is a musical portrayal of Hong Kong where the film was based - a true multicultural melting pot. The soundtrack - a blend of Cantonpop, western pop and works by Frankie Chan & Roel A. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators. Kar-Wai’s work evidently implies that bliss is not necessarily bound to a place, but usually to the people inhabiting it.'Crowned as the definitive masterpiece that launched Wong Kar-wai's international success, Chungking Express is a romantic drama revolving around the themes of love and loss, physical and emotional distances in the metropolitan city life. In Chungking Express, “California Dreaming” is not only used to evoke the desire to leave the unsteady life of the Hong Kong milieu and search for safety in a faraway place, but also to deconstruct this escapist fantasy.

Upon his question she tells him “Really it’s no big deal” and eventually they decide to fly “wherever want,” just as an entirely different song starts playing over a shot of the now silent stereo. From dream pop to jazz, the music in Chungking Express not only enhanced the two seemingly unrelated stories but is also said to have broken dream pop into mainstream success in Hong Kong - the opening number by Faye Wong, a cantonese rendition of 'Dreams' by The Cranberries is a perfect example here. This concrete realisation of the song’s imperative turns out to break the magic spell it held over Faye a year later, she returns to the diner, now a flight attendant, to find 663 there, who bought the place and is listening to “California Dreaming”. When 663 finally asks her out, however, the influence of the song’s escapist nature takes over (“If I didn’t tell her / I could leave today”) and while he is waiting for her in the bar California next to the diner, she is on her way to California, USA.

Yet, Faye does not leave, but in its place, dreams herself into a relationship with the lonesome 663 by secretly breaking into his apartment, redecorating subtly and tiding up frequently, all while “California Dreaming” ambiguously shifts between being intra- and extradiegetic. Instead, “California Dreaming” tells of a place of safety and warmth in a promised land (“I’d be safe and warm / If I was in L.A”) – if one did only manage to leave. Relationships end abruptly, professions are given up easily, people leave without saying goodbye, and even life itself can end rather quickly in and around the Chungking Mansions. The microcosm revolving around the diner is marked by perpetual liminality: nothing ever stays the same. Faye has turned up the song so loudly that he can barely understand her, but she likes it this way because, as she puts it, “ stops you from having to think.” And there is plenty to “think” (and despair) about in Kar-Wai’s visualisation of the Hong Kong milieu. 663 (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung), who unknowingly is just about to experience heartbreak of his own, steps out of the brownish street into the grey cold ceramic aesthetics of the Midnight Express. “California Dreaming” keeps on playing (“All the leaves are brown / And the sky is grey”) while this other man, police officer no.

223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) as he bumps into the ever-daydreaming waitress Faye (Faye Wong), only to be instantly revoked by his own voiceover narration revealing that in only six hours she would be in love with another man. The song marks the transition between the first and the second instalment, when hope sparks for the lovesick police officer no. In his two-part working-class dramedy set in the jungle of Hong Kong’s crowded streets 1, the Vietnam-era escapist hymn is utilised as a motif that changes everything by seemingly changing nothing at all. Seldom does a singular song shape an entire film’s atmosphere, nature and subtext as completely as “California Dreaming” (1965) by The Mamas and the Papas does in Wong Kar-Wai’s directorial masterpiece Chunghing Sam Lam ( Chungking Express, 1994).

Faye wong chungking express soundtrack