Hong Kong Double Feature

As part of the launch of issue #219 of 24 images magazine, dedicated to Hong Kong cinema, Cinéma du Musée presents two major classics of 1990s Hong Kong filmmaking.

The evening opens with Chungking Express, one of Wong Kar-Wai’s essential works and a memorable pop time capsule of nineties Hong Kong. It will be followed by Tsui Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China, a martial arts masterpiece led by the inimitable Jet Li that launched one of the most iconic film series of the decade.

• Chungking Express (1994, 102 min)
  Wong Kar Wai | Trailer
  Original version with French subtitles
  
  
  The whiplash, double-pronged Chungking Express is one of the defining works of nineties cinema and the film that made Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai an instant icon. Two heartsick Hong Kong cops (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung), both jilted by ex-lovers, cross paths at the Midnight Express take-out stand, where the ethereal pixie waitress Faye (Faye Wong) works. Anything goes in Wong’s gloriously shot and utterly unexpected charmer, which cemented the sex appeal of its gorgeous stars and forever turned canned pineapple and the Mamas and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’” into a token of romantic longing. 
  
  
• Once Upon a Time in China (1991, 134 min)
  Tsui Hark | Trailer
  Original version with English subtitles
  
  Writer-producer-director Tsui Hark’s sprawling vision of a changing nineteenth-century China begins with this riotously entertaining epic, a blockbuster hit that cemented Jet Li’s status as the greatest martial-arts superstar of his generation. Li displays his stunning, fast-and-fluid fighting style as the legendary martial-arts teacher and doctor Wong Fei-hung, who, with a band of disciples, battles a host of nefarious forces—foreign and local—who are threatening Chinese sovereignty as British and American imperialists encroach upon the Mainland. Once Upon a Time in China’s breathtaking blend of kung fu, comedy, romance, and melodrama climaxes in a whirlwind guns-vs.-fists finale that is also a thrilling affirmation of Chinese cultural identity.