(1994; Chung Hing sim lam, Chinese) Two young, lovelorn police officers make regular visits to the Midnight Express snack bar in Hong Kong. The first cop, He Qiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro), badge number 223, races past a woman in a blonde wig (Brigitte Lin), with whom he'll fall in love 57 hours later.

She also wears a raincoat and sunglasses with rims the color of her red lipstick and carries a pistol in her purse; she's searching for a group of Indians with suitcases containing hidden, contraband drugs.

The cop buys a can of pineapples each day with May 1st expiration date, his 25th birthday when he consumes all 30 cans, having been dumped by May, his girlfriend of five years (who liked pineapples), on April Fool's Day. "If memories could be canned, would they have expiration dates?"

Images flash past in a blur (jogging to sweat away excess water to prevent tears from grief) at the outset of director/writer Kar Wai Wong's impressionistic film, divided into a meditation on loneliness (with a vow to fall in love with the next woman in view) and a wacky romantic comedy.

Number 223 passes on the snack-bar manager's (Chen Jinquan) recommendation of his cousin Faye (Faye Wong), who's just begun working for him, because she looks too much like a boy with her short, black hair. Another cop, badge number 663 (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), who frequently orders chef salad to go for his girlfriend, tells the manager, who suggested he try taking her fish and chips, that she's left him to sample someone else.

Faye, a carefree girl who likes to listen to "California Dreamin'" played loud, accepts a letter from an air hostess intended for No. 663, off duty that night. He'd seduced her on a flight back to his flat where they made love to a simultaneous soundtrack of air-safety instructions and "What a Difference a Day Makes."

After her boss steams open the envelope and everyone else in the snack bar reads the message, Faye takes the enclosed keys to his apartment (he declines to accept the envelope when proffered) to begin subtly reordering his life, such as adding goldfish to his aquarium and changing the sheets on his bed and the labels on canned fish in his cupboards.

One evening ("wounded by a pin" after Faye had stuck the envelope to a message board) he returns to his tearful flat flooded where he affectionately addresses his towel and stuffed animals. "Can dreams be catching?" wonders Faye before she leaves the cop another envelope.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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