Yet, how often is it that WKW characters try to communicate with each other and fail? In surface conversation, Tony must keep a certain identity, and as such he bottles a lot of his emotion. At home, we see him in a different identity: out of uniform, capable of talking about his problems - albeit to household goods. These items are inherently interchangeable (something all the more funny when Faye does change them), but he gives them an identity. These identities are based on surface traits (a thin bar of soap, a soggy towel) which are really projections of emotions which Tony cannot otherwise express.
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The projections are specifically related to his girlfriend, so we can see just how far she has permeated his life and identity by how Tony perceives his very own living space. And what do we know about her? By Tony’s lyrical memories she has an ethereal quality which WKW leaves as slightly unreal. She is only ‘the air-stewardess’ - almost an expression of fantasy. The result is that, through Tony’s memories we get a glimpse of what she means to him, her ‘specialness’, but very little actually about her. And this is perfectly fitting, as (to repeat my earlier question - itself asked in Haruki Murakami’s later The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Murakami being an author that WKW reputedly reads) how well can two people know one another? What she means to Tony - her respective identity to him - is something which can only be hinted at. Actually knowing the real her will not bring us closer to understanding what he feels.
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Whatever one feels about this viewpoint, there is no denying the ability WKW has in taking us into extremely subjective perception. And this in itself is underpinned by the idea of identity: we can no longer be external observers, without an identity in the film world - we must see things the way the protagonists do; they cannot see the whole world or the whole truth, and it is this very aspect of imperfection which gives them an identity.
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Occasionally we step back and see just how different subjective perception can be from what we normally trumpet as reality. Take when Tony meets Valerie Chow for the last time; she is characterised completely differently from his memories. Not in the sense that she acts differently but in the sense that they now mean different things, their respective identities are no longer as he remembered. The philosophically correct may say that WKW doesn’t give enough respect to reality, but these criticism’s just don’t cut it: if WKW didn’t give his characters a subjective outlook, we would be faced with the cinema of the righteous - the audience and the filmmaker casting judgement rather than sharing an experience. Again and again we have WKW characters who can’t say for certain whether something is right or wrong - and it is this uncertainty which at least partially accounts for why people feel WKW has expanded the boundaries of cinematic perception.
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Then there is Faye Wong. A pop phenomenon in Hong Kong and beyond, she appears in Chungking in a pixie-ish Jean Seberg-like guise, exuding a boundless, youthful energy. She certainly seems to have the unencumbered freedom of youth shown, for example, in the scene when she walks down the street with Tony and outlines her plans to go to California. ‘California’s fun, is it?’ asks Tony, seeming all the less positive. ‘Dunno,’ says Faye. ‘If it isn’t, I can go somewhere else.’ It is this open, free attitude which breathes fresh air into the second story.
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But there is an underlying edge which does raise eyebrows when we see Faye entering Tony’s home. She, ever so enchantingly, fools with the very place where his internal identity shows itself. She even goes to the point of interfering with possibilities by deleting Valerie’s conciliatory message from the answerphone. Faye, too, has an identity which is hidden and only vents itself when she is alone - but not in her own place: at Tony’s place. She stamps her existence all over his home, and the place becomes a shifting cauldron of identity - like when she replaces Tony’s flip-flops, but later on he reverts to wearing his old ones, symbolising his hard-to-sever connection with his past. For not the last time in his career, WKW is ambiguous with depiction: on the one hand we have something that can be seen as incredibly invasive - not just physically, but emotionally; but on the other hand Faye’s presence, her force of life, is something we can identify with and encourage. Outside of Tony’s home, we only see her at the Midnight Express, nodding and grooving to California Dreamin’ - she says she likes it because she doesn’t have to think - but we never see her at home.
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Except at Tony’s home. WKW has continually been fascinated with the concept of rootlessness, or perhaps more accurately, displacement: orphans, adoptees, migrants - they are central to many of his films. And whilst we can look at Faye Wong’s character and say she is the youth of Hong Kong, with an identity built on that foundation, WKW has given her a curiously migratory outlook. Not just in the sense that she wants to go to California - even when she is back she is ready to leave again for destination unknown. And when she is at Tony’s apartment, there is an almost cuckoo-like usage of his home-space: she is in her element, although she knows that she can’t stay for long. One can see a parallel with the idea of migration and diaspora: a concept known to many Chinese, particularly those in Hong Kong - the place having seen human influxes and outfluxes many times. And at the time of the film, this idea was all the more pressing considering the approach of 1997. In the face of this, what is Faye’s identity? Where is her home (in all senses of the word) where she can uncover her internal identity? Or is she inherently a migrant; both rootless and unencumbered? Whilst Faye is the surface of these concepts, we can apply the same question to the Indian workers we see in the background - by bringing their culture with them, have they brought their home, or is that something they have left behind? Are they now rootless - do they have something to return to, or are they looking ahead?
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