Favorite Characters: Cop 663 (Chungking Express)

Slash possibly 633?  This character is in a similar situation to Lulu/Mimi in Days of Being Wild, with characters addressing him differently at different points of the film, except he never even gets a name, just a number.  Still, whoever he is (I’m gonna go with IMDb and use 663,) he’s great and definitely deserving of his own write-up.  Before we get started, here’s my A Little TLC(w) addition to my Chungking Express review.  “Recommend?  In General – Yes.  It’s lovely and sweet, and despite the hardcore angst of some of the characters, it’s probably Wong Kar-wai’s most optimistic film.  Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Absolutely.  Leung is terrific as this lovelorn, inattentive cop, very charming” (a few Cop 663-related spoilers.)

The first thing you notice about Cop 663 is that he’s set in his ways.  We’re introduced to him at the midnight express, where he buys the same takeout order for his girlfriend every time, it never occurring to him that she might like something different.  Even though he’s been dating a stewardess, he’s not one for straying far from home, he frequents the same food stalls every day, and his cupboards at home are filled with stacks of identical cans.  It’s not that he’s resistant to change – when change does start creeping into his life, it takes him a ridiculously long time to even notice – more that he’s caught in his own inertia.  What he’s been doing works for him, so why try something new?

He’s very even-keeled, deceptively so considering how melancholy he is when he’s at home.  When his girlfriend leaves him, saying she “needs a change,” he quietly jokes that the midnight express owner is to blame, having convinced him to switch up his takeout order and put the idea of change into her head.  But he doesn’t get angry, and he doesn’t recoil at the thought of change for himself.  Instead, he just quietly carries on.  His same-old same-old routine might not have worked out the way he’d hoped, but it’s all he has, and so he stays the course.  This extends to keeping his ex’s uniform neatly ironed and occasionally pretending that she’s still in the apartment, hiding to teasing him the way she used to.  These moments don’t have the same air of denial about them that Cop 223 does in the first half of the film.  Whereas 223 is cheerfully/desperately trying to convince himself it’s not over, Cop 663 has no such illusions.  He knows she’s not coming back, but he takes unhappy comfort in those memories of her, and sometimes, he allows himself to pretend he believes there’s still something between them.

Not to say that Cop 663 handles his heartbreak more healthily than Cop 223.  223 has all kinds of issues, and I can’t imagine anyone needs to spend more than a few minutes with him before seeing through his fake-happy façade, but while Cop 663 holds himself together a lot better in front of others, he’s still got it bad.  I love the gentle montage of him going around his apartment “consoling” his soap, his dish towel, and his stuffed animals.  Cop 223 tries to push his emotions away, but Cop 663 engages with his by projecting them onto something else.  In his eyes, his whole apartment is crying, and even when Faye starts surreptiously brightening up the place, he still finds ways to read moroseness into it.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai, and the film itself, strikes a really great balance with this character.  The portrayal here is just knowing enough to be lightly poking fun at 663’s continued mooning, and you can’t help but smile at him chiding his bar of soap for letting itself “waste away” in its depression.  But at the same time, Leung’s performance is so low-key and earnest that, even at his most absurdly angsty, he’s never outright laughable.  There’s just the right mix of honest heartbreak and quiet humor here.

Chungking Express (1994, PG-13)

For whatever reason, I always think of this as the quintessential Wong Kar-wai movie.  I couldn’t tell you why, since, while his work is thematically similar and characteristically lush/emotional, his films have a lot of variety.  Ashes of Time, for instance, is very little like 2046.  Certainly, I like In the Mood for Love the best, and to be honest, Chungking Express would probably be somewhere in the middle of my Wong rankings (just because there are so many great ones.)  And yet, when I think Wong Kar-wai, this film is usually what I picture first.

The movie tells two mostly unrelated love stories, not even interweaving the narratives beyond a nod or two; it’s pretty much, “first story, second story, the end.”  In the first, the incurably optimistic, slightly obsessive Cop 223 is cheerfully avoiding coping with a recent breakup.  He’s been ringing his ex-girlfriend’s house to chat with her folks and collecting cans of pineapple with the same expiration date (the date at which he’s decided he’ll finally accept it’s over between them.)  His fixations, however, are interrupted by a chance encounter with an enigmatic, strikingly-beautiful woman in a blonde wig. 

The second story features another officer, Cop 663.  He too has suffered a recent loss in love, but unbeknownst to him, he’s become the object of someone else’s affections – Faye, the daydreamy young woman who works at the midnight express.  When Cop 663’s ex-girlfriend leaves a letter for him at the restaurant, along with her key to his apartment, Faye (who seems a bit like a Chinese precursor to Amélie) takes it upon herself to bring a little brightness to his life.  This is probably the better fleshed-out story of the two, and while I like Cop 223 and the woman in the blonde wig, it’s also my favorite.

This movie has everything that I associate with Wong:  everyday dialogue paired with emotional voiceovers, fantastic imagery, evocative music, inventive character foibles, and romantic angst up the ying yang.  I mean, Cop 223 goes jogging to get sweaty so he won’t have any water left for tears – it doesn’t get much more Wong Kar-wai than that, and we’re talking about a movie that features another man who sees the personification of his own lovelorn-ness in his apartment.  And yet, the film can also be gloriously upbeat at times.  I really enjoy the scenes of Faye trying to secretly introduce Cop 663 to a bit of happiness.  Factually, she’s definitely a stalker, but along with Buster Keaton in Spite Marriage, she’s probably one of the most adorable stalkers in movie history.  And let’s be real – the characters in most romances don’t act the way rational people do, so the bar isn’t as high.

The acting, as usual, is fabulous.  Takeshi Kaneshiro (Jin from House of Flying Daggers) brings an earnest affability to Cop 223 that keeps him from being “too much.”  Brigitte Lin from Ashes of Time is steely as the woman in the blonde wig, but she offers hints of vulnerability, too.  I think Faye Wong is better in 2046, her second movie with Wong, but she makes an engaging and likeable Faye.  And Tony Leung Chiu-wai imbues Cop 663 with a gentle soulfulness – despite my own aromantic asexuality, I get why Faye would be all over that.

Warnings

A little violence, drugs, and brief sexual content.