Chungking Express is one of Wong Kar Wai’s greatest hits. A combination of mellow hues, flickering strobe lights, and thoughtful characters, it feels like it was destined to resonate with a younger generation of film lovers. And here we are, thirty years after its release in 1994, still reflecting on the moments it left behind.

He Zhiwu, or Cop 223, stands alone in his apartment after another failed attempt at connection. It’s May, and he’s been buying a can of pineapple every day, each marked with the same expiration date: May 1. It’s the date he’s chosen to stop grieving his ex-girlfriend, telling himself that if she hasn’t come back by then, their relationship will truly be over. On the night of that deadline, he presses his face against the cold refrigerator and wonders aloud: could memories, like cans of pineapple, also have expiration dates? If they do, he says, he hopes they’ll last for centuries. This idea is the emotional heart of Chungking Express. It captures the ache of trying to hold onto something that will inevitably disappear. But the beauty lies in the character’s awareness of this truth. He knows that memories can only truly endure in spirit and he wishes they could last for a much longer period, I think for that purpose of being able to breathe and to feel what he has now lost, his partner. It is a terribly sad thought, it feels like a parent trying to preserve the last piece of innocence or wonder their child still has, knowing that with every person they talk to, every book they read, every drink they try or person they kiss, the small child fades deeper and deeper away; an old polaroid. The smallest moments vanish, and even the ones that remain lodged in the back of our minds are almost preserved, untouchable, suspended. We can only reminisce. The moment we crave to relive is already gone, and we will never experience it again in the same way.

This kind of reflection makes us pause. We start thinking about the things we miss from the past, and even about a strange kind of nostalgia for things we haven’t experienced yet. I find myself doing this often. I was watching a year-old YouTube vlog from Moya Mawhinney. She was in Bali, staying at Potato Head, and she mentioned the beautiful bar in her room. My mind drifted. I imagined myself in that same setting, in a pretty hotel room with a sweet built-in bar. But of course, it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe you could call this a precognitive dream, a kind of future nostalgia. But that is the point– whether we are dwelling on the past, getting lost in the present, or mourning a future that has not even arrived, we are always chasing something just out of reach.

We move too fast. We think too harshly. In the past decade, and especially after the world slowed down during Covid, it feels like we have forgotten how to enjoy a moment simply for what it is. Year after year, nostalgia hits us harder. We try to bring back old trends, relive past decades, and recreate the feeling that there was once something different in the air.

That quote from Chungking Express stays with me because it understands how fragile and impossible it is to hold time still. Yet maybe there’s something quietly reassuring in that fragility. Maybe, like Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, who says that one day all this will be stories and his pictures will become old photographs, we too can feel infinite for a moment. And maybe that’s enough.

Because perhaps stories are infinite. Perhaps they don’t need to last for centuries in order to live on. They become part of us. They stay with us, shape us, and echo in the legacies we leave behind. That might just be everlasting enough.

Thanks for reading, this month’s series: Film. Hope you enjoyed this moment of thought with me, and please please let me know your own thoughts on this quote and what it means to yo. I’m eager to know.

See you in the next one,

Deb

Where all the love goes: cinema.