I argue that this indeterminate positioning of music in cinematic space reinforces the film’s final theme – the future is unwritten. 1 Throughout Chungking Express, music moves between onscreen, offscreen, and nondiegetic space. But more important than the fact that Wong selected old songs is the way the music appears in the soundtrack. The soundtrack, mostly consisting of popular songs of decades past, reinforces this notion of expiration and hints at nostalgia (Teo 2005, 53-54). Life, Wong seems to be saying, is also about expirations. He notes that Wong makes time tangible via expiring objects – soap, canned pineapple, old rags (Teo 2005, 63). Teo’s argument is particularly perceptive. Many scholars (Teo 2005 Abbass 1997 Huang 2002) have analyzed Wong’s manipulation of time, space, and chance in Chungking Express via narrative and visual analysis. Wong grasped this apprehension and wove it into his film’s dual narrative. Apprehension about chance, change, and the future permeated Hong Kong at the time of the film – in three years, Great Britain would return control of the city to mainland China.
The film, like the short story, emphasizes that life is a string of chances to which we react.
This quote from a simple three-page tale inspired Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 film Chungking Express (Teo 2005, 50).
«Was it really alright for one’s dreams to come true so easily?» Murakami Haruki’s narrator asks in his short story, On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning (Murakami 1993, 71).
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