If my memory of her has an expiration date, let it be 10,000 years…
I wonder if there’s anything in the world that doesn’t expire?
I’m watching Chungking Express, feeling terribly confused about the plot (if it even has one) and experiencing strange familiarity towards this movie. It has something in it of the old 1990’s HK movie marathons I used to hold with myself and myself on the weekends. But obviously it is not so similar at all to them, being a very stylistically orientated, less-commercialised film as opposed to the very cheesy happily-ever-after movies I used to watch. There’s something in Brigitte Lin’s trembling hands as she exhales her cigarette smoke, in Takeshi Kaneshiro’s swilling of pineapple juice and something… Well, that’s as far as I’ve gotten.
Nevertheless, everytime I watch a Hong Kong movie, there is always nostalgia overflowing within me. I have never seen a movie in Cantonese in Hong Kong, without subtitles or without my mother explaining the dialogue. I wonder if I ever will. There’s something about Hong Kong that draws me in, and I’m not sure if it’s the movies or not. It’s smelly, it’s crowded, and everyone is just so Chinese. But then again… So am I, except only in a slightly different way. The movies can’t edit these people out though. They can’t remove the constant babble of Cantonese, they can’t erase those grim, chubby, yellow faces. So maybe the movies aren’t so different from reality, in setting at least.
There is also something that repulses me about Hong Kong - the fact that I want so much to be able to integrate seamlessly into that society one day but knowing that I won’t every really achieve it infuriates me. I get angry at myself, I get angry at my parents, I get angry at Australia and China and Hong Kong. It’s scary to be so angry at something I can’t help. It’s scary to be so helpless in the face of something that makes me so angry.