The Emotional Impact of Colors in Wong Karwai’s early Films & Learnings for Film Colorists
Part II: Colors of Emotion in ‘Chungking Express’
CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994)
Shot within the space of just two months, Chungking Express is Wong Karwai’s best known film from the 1990s and, like Fallen Angels which was released a year later, an assembly of two loosely interconnected stories.
One is about Cop 223 (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro) who is stuck in an empty, loveless life. The only meaningful content of his days appears to be the copious consumption of pineapple cans close to their expiry date. The story’s other character is a female criminal mastermind (the grande dame of Hongkong and Taiwanese cinema, Brigitte Lin) who keeps hiding behind shades and an oversized blonde wig, and who is in the middle of organizing an ill-fated drug smuggling operation.
The two protagonists meet by chance in a sleazy bar and share a drunken yet chaste night together. In the morning, the coldly pragmatic woman goes to kill a former lover who betrayed her, while the disheartened cop goes for a run to sweat off his frustrations at yet another romantic failure. End of that story.
The other story plays like a romantic comedy in which heartbroken Cop 663 (Tony Leung) frequently visits a small ‘Midnight Express’ diner where a young female employee named Faye (Faye Wong), who also happens to be the owner’s niece, develops something of a crush on him. Too timid to signal him directly, she secretly visits his apartment, using the keys that fell out of a letter delivered by the cop’s disillusioned and parting girlfriend, where she cleans the place and even rearranges part of the decoration. She does so frequently, without Cop 663 noticing anything.
Until he does.
Chungking Express – An Orange Teaser
One of the main colors painting the encounter between lovelorn Cop 223 and the drug dealer is orange. As we already observed in As Tears Go By (Part I), and as we shall notice in Fallen Angels (Part III), orange adopts different roles and meanings in Wong Karwai’s films: a violence-offsetting, innocently romantic orange in Tears, the opposite in Angels.
In this scene here in Chungking Express, a comparatively saturated orange, sprinkled with sparkling dots of yellow, brown and red, cunningly teases Cop 223 and us, the audience, into fantasizing about his romantic possibilities in the night ahead.
[9 – Chungking Express, Wong Karwai, HK 1994: Cop 223 and the drug dealer, Bottoms Up bar]
However, it turns out that the scene’s color scheme is as fickle and flimsy as the audience’s impulsive orange-induced fantasies: the woman remains frustratingly unapproachable behind her red-rimmed shades, Burberry’s coat and oversized wig, despite Cop 223’s inebriated but still respectably eloquent seduction efforts.
Eventually, she sleeps on his bed in that outfit and without having allowed our frustrated male protagonist to touch her. By which time the previously lively, saturated and seductive hue has now shed its disguise and faded into an almost yellow-green tinted brown:
[10 – Chungking Express, Wong Karwai, HK 1994: the drug dealer falls asleep in 223’s room]
Which, in fact, serves as a visceral reminder that the mysterious lady is a brutal assassin, as we learned already before this encounter in a scene that came in similar orange hues:
[11 – Chungking Express, Wong Karwai, HK 1994: the drug dealer killing a man who betrayed her]
Emotionally, the audience emerges from their encounter feeling entertained and even mildly enamored, but at the same time disoriented and somewhat wary of orange.
Orange is, yet again, a double-edged color/sword in Wong Karwai’s dexterous hands.
Chungking Express – Cool Blue Emptiness
Their parting the next morning throws both 223 and the drug dealer/assassin into a sea of blue:
[12 – Chungking Express, Wong Karwai, HK 1994: Cop 223 and the mysterious female dug dealer whose paths part again]
The theme of Chungking Express has by now become crystal clear and unambiguous: empty lives, loneliness and the futile search for human connection.
In this first story, an overall monochromatic blue serves as yet another key theme-enforcing player. In the above scenes, it does not allow much ‘competition’ in terms of other, potentially harmonizing or offsetting colors in these fleeting moments. Instead it meshes with a few subtle greys, assuming varying levels of saturation that range from a sense of oppressive melancholy to flushed-out emptiness.
Let us briefly compare those blue scenes in Chungking Express to another, much earlier movie: in the 1955 film All That Heaven Allows, a deeply saturated blue symbolizes a cold and lonely world the protagonists seek shelter from but which, at the same time and often in the same frame, stands in stark contrast to their warm, escape-oriented love nest:
[13 – All That Heaven Allows, Douglas Sirk, USA 1955: light and deeply saturated blues represent a painful loneliness the protagonist seek to escape]
Whereas the narrative duality and the warm/cold visual contrast created by icy blues and warm orange colors in All That Heaven Allows provide the story’s characters with at least some form of temporary escape, Chungking Express’ blue scenes offer no such contrast, no escape.
Here, life is mono-chromatically empty, devoid of meaning, devoid of love and human connection. The characters get trapped in whatever scene they find themselves in. Unsurprisingly, Cop 223 and the drug dealer do not connect emotionally or physically despite spending the night together. They remain infinitely locked up in their own confined worlds. The next morning, they part ways and that was it.
It almost reminds us of Derek Jarman’s Blue (UK, 1993) a film that showed nothing but a screen filled with blue. The filmmaker had contracted AIDS and as his eyesight started to decline rapidly, flashes of blue often appeared in front of his eyes which made him wonder “what lies behind the infinity of the skies and the oceans?”.
[14 – Blue, Derek Jarman, UK 1993: the color blue as a powerful symbol for the director’s implacable demise, at the same time representing the infinity of the universe]
While Jarman’s Blue was “easy” to manage in visual terms, what Chungking Express teaches us that it is critical for the colorist, director and DP to understand that even a monochromatic design must be highly sensitive towards the range of available hues, luminance and saturation levels, that is how those elements and their respective interplay best create a specific mood and, ultimately, elicit a corresponding emotional reaction in the audience.
In As Tears Go By, we observed that blue associates with the cold-hearted, brutal physical violence of the criminal underworld; in Chungking Express one is left with the uncanny sensation that the all-encompassing, mono-chromatic deployment of blue makes the film’s theme and emotional experience of loneliness and disconnection feel even more torturous and destructive than physical pain.
Such is the emotional power of color deployment that focuses on the narrative and corresponding emotional strategies.
Chungking Express – Yellow Hiding in Cyan Sight
In the film’s second story, the diner’s young woman, Faye, develops an affection to one of her frequent visitors, Cop 663 who seems jaded towards his job, romance, and life in general.
Quiet but observant of everything that is going on around her, she often appears as if in hiding, lurking out from some hidden corner or from behind a window while blending into whatever reflective surface seems willing to swallow her.
[15 – Chungking Express, Wong Karwai, HK 1994: Faye often appears to be hiding and keenly observing things at the same time]
The woman’s bright yet not strongly saturated yellow shirt commands visual attention.
In fact, it makes Faye stand out against an even lighter and less saturated cyan-gray environment. The color combination allows her, in conjunction with her quirky tendency to hide and be fully present at the same time, to appear innocuous in a charming if not playfully mesmerizing way. After a while, even Cop 663 notices.
Before he does, however, 663 fills his free time with one of his fleeting romances, this time with a Cathay Pacific flight attendant who is clearly more into him than the other way round.
The color design applied to this moment of intimacy viscerally underlines, however, his unwillingness to invest any deeper feelings other than superficial entertainment into the relationship:
[16 – Chungking Express, Wong Karwai, HK 1994: Cop 663 and his stewardess girlfriend’s moment of playful intimacy at his apartment]
Light green/cyan and blue tones against patches of white or bright luminance rule the scene, creating a sense of playful, superficial entertainment without any tangible depth of romantic emotions.
It is a scene that drives the narrative forward and serves a critical story purpose but which, emotionally, is not designed to lodge in the protagonists’ or audience’s memory for long.
When the stewardess appears at the diner to meet with her lover for one last time before she flies away, his failure to turn up hastens the end of their relationship and she leaves a letter with the keys to his apartment and ask Faye to pass it to him whenever he visits the diner again.
When the keys accidentally slip out of the envelope, Faye decides to pay his apartment a secret visit. One such visit turns into many, each time she cleans his apartment, rearranges parts of the furniture or decoration and even leaves some of her personal items and, naturally, uses the opportunity to find out more about the guy and his life.
[17 – Chungking Express, Wong Karwai, HK 1994: Faye pays secret visits to Cop 663’s apartment]
The color design of these scenes corresponds to those at the beginning of her story: a conspicuously but non-intrusive yellow hiding in plain (light cyan/green/blue) sight. We, the audience, cannot be sure about Faye’s real intentions: clearly, she must have a crush on him, but to what extent? And does she want to bring it out into the open?
The colors don’t offer any clue or answer, not at this stage, that is: a reminder that a good writer and storyteller maintains savvy control over when to release which information elements. On the other hand, there is no visual or color-related indication of malice or ill will on Faye’s part either, which is also important with a view to the audience’s emotional management and the impact those deployed colors are designed to exert, viscerally and consciously.
When Faye runs into him at a street restaurant, the colors change and become more prominent, and so does her mindset and even her behavior: she is now more self-confident, assertive and forthcoming towards him.
[18 – Chungking Express, Wong Karwai, HK 1994: Faye runs into Cop 663’s at a street restaurant]
Here, Faye’s shirt sports a different, more saturated yellow that makes her the visually most assertive element in the picture. In addition, light but saturated reds are added to the scene’s environment, conjuring an almost celebratory feel within this Chinese cultural context.
In emotional terms, a transformation has taken place in Faye and the audience remains engaged, now eager to find out if and how things develop between her and the cop.
Eventually, Cop 663 surprises her at his apartment. After the initial mild shock and surprise, they start talking, they relax on the sofa and listen to music. The scene is now defined by a color palette very similar to Wah and Ngor’s scene in As Tears Go By when they discover their affection for each other and embark on a romantic relationship: warm orange-brown elements set against light cyan and blue tones.
However, in Chungking Express, no kiss, no explicitly romantic relationship commences, and yet the audience is emotionally touched by the light connection between the two characters: a hesitant, timid connection with palpable but unconsummated romantic undertones.
[19 – Chungking Express, Wong Karwai, HK 1994: Faye and Cop 663 at his apartment]
Their connection does not unfold into a fully-fledged romantic relationship. While Cop 663 eventually realizes that he likes Faye and wants her to attend the grand opening of the diner he recently purchased from her uncle (he quit his cop career), she tells him that she has decided to leave Hongkong and go to California – as a flight attendant.
Cop 663 takes her decision in good spirits and the color palette does not change much from the previous scene in his apartment, indicating that their relationship shall stay as it is.
[20 – Chungking Express, Wong Karwai, HK 1994: final scene, as Faye bids Cop 663 farewell]
It is a message that is clearly and impactfully conveyed to the audience, in both narrative and color-related visual terms, and one that wraps up the story.
All Images sourced via Shotdeck.com (subscription), unless otherwise indicated.
This 4-part Essay formed author Holger E. Metzger’s Thesis for Dado Valentic’s Color Grading Master Program, the world's leading professional film color grading program.
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