Identity and Chungking Express

Chungking Express is definitely something special.

I won't say that it is Wong Kar-Wai's best film, but it does manage to capture something so ethereal, so living that it seems unique. Of course, it was the film where Hong Kong's premier maverick movie triumvirate - director WKW, production designer William Chang, and Australian director of photography Chris Doyle - decided to break with their tradition of glacial paced shooting schedules to shoot a movie in three weeks, the resultant film being a wild ride of emotional uplift and pure cinematic charisma. However, such is the spontaneous energy felt by the audience that the deeper aspects of the film are often ignored or dismissed.

Generally, WKW certainly resembles the idea of the auteur as characterised by certain European post-war filmmakers, and his other films apart from Chungking have a more measured, authored feel that befits such a label. He has trademarks, in terms of style, method of address, and themes, often taking years to craft his vision on to film. In Hong Kong, his way certainly stands out.

But, consistently, WKW has got on with expanding the possibilities of film idiosyncratically, despite the varied reception of audiences. For those who dig his films (or feel they dig his films - who can be sure?), they bring a new experience to the screen - an emotional connection which is both direct and elliptical, films which are both unspeakably visual yet also examples of literature. The comparison with literature is more apt than it may initially seem: the works of WKW have a quality which relies on characters - there are no parts which are entirely separated from the characters or something closely related to them. If WKW shoots a landscape, it is because it is what a character sees, or what a character sees metaphorically, or it is a highlighting of some concept brought forth by the character, surrounding the character. Character is bled into everything, which is why the intensely visual nature of WKW's work results in more than just trickery of the observer: the viewpoint is so ingrained into the characters (whether being directly subjective to a character's point of view or emotions, or obliquely so we observe how the character sees their world) that this joins up with the narrative voice - a world already coloured by the protagonists' consciousness. This aspect is shared by literature, as almost all literature (whether written in the first or third person) requires a telling which allows the characters emotions to colour the very aspect of storytelling, and it is this very feature which creates the human, empathic connection between page and consciousness.

None of this means a thing, though, if you don't get WKW. Perhaps it's just a matter of taste, but some people are unable to connect with his movies. Some don't see beyond the confines of other films: what they admire about acting, pace, dramatic climaxes, narrative responsibility - very often WKW handles these aspects in a way too far removed from the norm - they cannot find in a palatable form with WKW. Some have problems with the very ideas or philosophies which float around in his films; or rather what is missing - the moral viewpoint is often absent; WKW rarely dwells on social issues or (a favourite of some film scholars) overt double-underlined politics; and his characters often believe that their dilemmas are unique and all-important, which earns them the label of being self-centred.

I can go so far as to say that critics who highlight such 'faults' (rather than just say the films aren't to their taste) are missing the point. The reason why so many people are refreshed by WKW is not just his technical style (which, in any case, is mutable - as shown in In The Mood For Love), but because he is willing to show a viewpoint which is so much more expansive than normal. He takes risks and doesn't adhere to codes - artistic or political codes. There is a sense of freedom in his expression which is not stifled by expectation, political correctness or righteousness: a character is a character, and it is so much better if we get to see something beyond the confines placed by society and expectation on us everyday. It actually seems funny that there are critics out there who liked In The Mood For Love because they saw it as a move in the 'right' direction - but they then find fault (presumably in ideology) with the core introspection in that movie: the idea of the protagonists that 'we won't be like them', culminating in a personal secret, something separating part of a character's consciousness from the rest of society. Such critics are looking for what amounts to 'philosophical correctness', rather than enjoying the film as a piece of personal, profoundly human expression.

So, how does Chungking Express come into this? The movie appears to be WKW's most accessible, and so it is easy to dismiss the content of the film as whimsy, confection or eye (and mind) candy. It certainly feels different to his other films, something which is often put down to its spontaneity. Outside of Asia, some only see Chungking as a light debut, followed by experimental mannerisms and attempts at profundity in Fallen Angels and Happy Together. But you really have to see the whole picture. With Days Of Being Wild and Ashes Of Time already (largely) behind him, WKW was a seasoned maker of extremely intricate and profound movies when he came to do Chungking - and the film manages to be new and energetic whilst also successfully concealing WKW's deeper themes (often ignored by those who only read the Godardian feel and limit themselves to this archetype) behind its whirlwind energy. The purpose of this essay is to shed light on at least one of these themes, and to show some of the depth that the film has.

Why the theme of identity? There are many other themes over the whole spectrum of WKW's works: time, memory, love, desire, loss, solipsism, choice - to name but a few. All these highlight the position of the individual in existence: the very things which makes them individuals. But they do not exist in a vacuum. Though WKW's characters seem isolated, alienated and 'special' - often the very aspect which annoys his detractors - this situation actually serves to highlight their relative position to the rest of society and reality, and so the idea of identity seems so much more interesting. Chungking Express is a great film to probe these ideas: WKW warps and expands the ultra-transience of modern HK, where the issue of identity is never clear cut. This works in both a personal sense - the roving jungle of urban existence, swamped by the shifting identities of global commerce and fashions; progress which waits for no man - as well as in a national (and political) sense; the backdrop of 1997 certainly adding emphasis and urgency to the idea of belonging.

But of course, WKW is famed for being different, so he never simply drags up issues to be hammered out. Rather, by making characters who show alienation, rootlessness and solipsism, references to identity are all the more profound: the idea that, for all the individual solipsism the characters possess, they are still humans amongst other humans with at least the need for some idea of identity.

Looking to the film itself, from the very first shot of Chungking we are thrown into a world where identity is complex, not as it first seems. The camera follows Brigitte Lin's smuggler, staccato shot rhythm and the film's characteristic blurred, low frame-rate chase-style breaking up her fleeting image, already obscured by shades and a wig. She winds her way through mazes of shops and dwellings, the faces of Indians flying past. This area is the Chungking Mansions area of Kowloon, recognisable to many by its mix of inhabitants from the Indian subcontinent. Though Brigitte stands out, she doesn't look as though she is lost or an outsider - she moves confidently as the camera tries to keep up, and eventually a curtain is thrown across our view and the film's title appears.

According to WKW, the Chungking Mansions area was virgin territory for filmmakers. He is probably right. Hong Kong's films are often remarkably insular, considering the territory holds such a mix of cultures. Despite the number of Indians and other races living in downtown Kowloon, they were somewhat under-represented in films and television. The few film depictions which did exist consisted of little more than comic stereotypes: mysterious maharajahs and oddballs with Peter Sellers-style funny accents. But in Chungking we see real people, where they really live - looking in on the camera as if the viewer is the outsider.

But WKW isn't trying to remake Look Who's Coming To Dinner - there is no big issue to push and in the end the story doesn't centre on the Indians per se. But they are in the background in both halves of the film. One may question the depiction of their ghetto in the first half, but WKW is simply being honest: as so little reaches the surface, there is an entire underworld where people are simply struggling to survive. WKW doesn't try to push a 'right' way of viewing this underworld, or to try to correct any prejudice we may have - he simply gives us a view of this world.

Of course, we are following a character played by Brigitte Lin - a native of Taiwan who, via the Hong Kong movie circuit, became one of 'Chinese' Asia's most famous faces - and so the idea of identity centres on her personally. In a sense, she is an icon synonymous with the identity of a modern, popular Chinese culture, and so the Hong Kong audiences instinctively claim her as their own. This isn't something that WKW debunks. In the end, we do follow her as our own when she has to fight for survival. Yet we cannot quite dismiss the idea that her identity is mutable - from the first shot cautious and furtive, moving into her lair and away from the surface, visible world of 'native' Hong Kong. Initially, she is more protected in the underworld of the Indians, their bond spelled out in US dollars. In the end, she fights Indians who are out to put a 'deadline' on her. Between these two positions there is no 'correct' depiction - no condescending attitude that Brigitte has misplaced her trust. She lives in an underworld where trust is a liability, identity merely a shifting part of the machinery of illicit industry. The very idea of drug smuggling - the hallmark of 'baddies' in so many Hong Kong action movies - is not used as an evil concept in itself in Chungking. Instead, it ties in with the very idea of false identity: a surface identity which shifts with occasion.

And the Indians themselves, we never get to know them. When Brigitte is chased by other Indians, these are only agents out to eliminate her. When she goes out questioning Indians to find the missing smugglers, she converses in English and Cantonese: 'Have you seen these people.' There is such a variety of people that Brigitte cannot simply say 'those Indians' as she tells us in voiceover. We only know them as 'those Indians' and, unable to use this label when searching amongst Indians, she tries to grasp at their identity by pointing at passports, or saying 'they have children with them'. The generalisation of identity has reached such a point the we could be talking about anyone.

WKW doesn't indulge us in an open comparison between this and the idea of a Hong Kong identity, or its relative position with a Chinese identity. But it is clear that limiting an identity to nationhood limits perception to peoples rather than individuals. And Hong Kong is so swelled with peoples and individuals that the question of a Hong Kong identity alone is bewildering. Apart from geography, what could such an identity be cemented by? Law? Not for the many illegal immigrants (Indian, Chinese or otherwise) trying to survive unseen. Chineseness? Definitely not, as it is impossible to ignore the mix of cultures existing in Hong Kong, be they the thousands of Caucasian business migrants of Central, or the ghettos of other Asians dotted around Hong Kong and Kowloon.

Instead, WKW leaves any search for a socio-political identity in the background, whilst in the foreground we have a more personal look at individual identity. Brigitte's character appears practically in disguise, but when audiences identify her as the movie star, they say 'it's Brigitte Lin'. But her film identity is as a nameless smuggler or, for Takeshi Kaneshiro's naive cop, a target for his affections. He doesn't identify the very aspect of her which his job should alert him to. For him, her identity is never more than a detail in passing: 'Your friend in room 702,' as the pager message puts it. This attitude to identity is a spill-over from WKW's work on Ashes Of Time, where characters are often only referred to as 'that person'. These phrases are not only uncertain, they are also concepts that are inherently mutable: how can you define a person as 'that person' always, when at any time the phrase can apply to anyone? Or, equally, the person in room 702 is not something that will remain as a fixed measure of identity. This focus on mutable concepts ties in with Brigitte's voiceover as Takeshi tries to get to know her: 'People will change.'

It is Takeshi's character who gives the film's first voiceover, which manages to summarise the concept of an individual in contact with the world: 'We rub shoulders with each other everyday...' we are strangers now, but Takeshi gives the possibility that we may know one another in the future, how our relative identities may shift. He then takes the step of introducing himself to us, giving us a name, his job and his police number. Later on, we learn a little more of him as we see him trying to call up (in a roundabout way) his ex-girlfriend. Again, he provides us with information - about his habit of waiting for his girlfriend. His 'habit' is a personal trait, something which marks out his individual identity, yet here it is in flux as his girlfriend has recently broken up with him.

WKW probes the very idea of what the girlfriend means to him, how her existence affects his own identity. On the one hand, we are talking about individuals who were, at some point, perfect strangers (as acknowledged by the opening voiceover). Yet as we see Takeshi, we are made to question if his girlfriend, or perhaps more crucially his idea of his girlfriend, has become a part of his own identity. This throws up the very heart of the question as to how well two people can actually know one another, and whether this is, itself, an emotional connection. Though Brigitte says, 'Knowing a person doesn't mean having a person,' even without having the person there can be an unrequited psuedo-connection - which becomes a part of the person's identity.

Takeshi is a textbook example. WKW goes to lengths to exclude any real, actual representation of his girlfriend. They have parted, yet her presence in his memory is still clouding his identity. Her actual identity is so playfully oblique, that she almost seems never to be a real person beyond his perception of her. WKW gives her the name 'May', itself a name of universal, international application, doing nothing to narrow down her identity. By Takeshi's call to her parents, we can surmise that she is probably Chinese, yet this doesn't cement anything as she has apparently been compared in looks to 'Yamaguchi the superstar'. We play here with relative concepts - pop values - values where we search for something shared, rather than something unique. These values form a background to the character's identity: raised in modern culture, he refers back to such modern, shared values, despite talking about something entirely personal to his own identity and emotional make-up. There is nothing unusual in this dichotomy, though. WKW shows how we share the same society, sometimes sharing, even striving for the same values. Even if they are not unique, these values can still have personal meanings to us, separate from their 'external' identities.

WKW doesn't knock this, at least not in a righteous way. A good example of a personalised identity imposed on something inherently impersonal, is Takeshi's fascination with canned pineapples. Really, the fruit should, objectively, only stand for the fruit. Yet, for Takeshi it is part of his identity given that he connects it with his ex-girlfriend (even though the connection is something as banal as 'because she liked pineapples'). This is yet another fact we learn about the never-seen May. In fact, the reality of her external identity is even more distant given that there is at least one other May in the film (an extra working at the Midnight Express). And, because we only ever hear Takeshi's side of his phone conversations (except two crucial 'truths': when he hears a male voice on his girlfriend's phone, and the final pager message about his 'friend in room 702'), what we know of his contact with others becomes warped by the lens of his outlook, identity inherently coloured by his extreme subjectivity.

Take the scene where he receives a pager message from a 'Ming'. In his disbelief, he attempts to question the correctness of the identity; he tries to warp the letters to form the 'May' that he wants. In extreme subjectivity, a name itself is something mutable: Takeshi tries to connect the identity of the caller to the internal identity of May which he has carved out. His denial - and how this seems almost pathetic in the face of reality - is all the more apparent to us, even if we only hear his own words.

Returning to the concept of the canned pineapples, this shows Takeshi's denial yet again. For some viewers, such denial is unforgivable; worthy of condemnation - but WKW revels in showing us the lengths his character will go to. Shorn of his girlfriend, Takeshi is left with the shards of what amounts to her identity. But how, one may ask, does a penchant for pineapples constitute an identity? WKW lets Takeshi dwell, in an oblique way, on the absurdity of such a concept. And the idea of absurdity strikes us as we see Takeshi buying more and more out of date canned pineapples whilst building up to his self-appointed deadline. But this absurdity is used to reach a very profound point which WKW seems to be making: that there is no other way of expressing the place May has in Takeshi's heart; the identity he has given her within himself. There are no absolute concepts he can refer to that would convey his feelings. Just as identity has been portrayed via relative concepts, emotion must too. Not because it is unimportant, not because it is not unique and everyone is in the same boat (the concept which many critics wanted WKW to expand on in In The Mood For Love). But simply because, though he does seem an absolutist romantic, Takeshi cannot rely on absolute concepts - he is surrounded by consumables, or the idea of disposability (like the outlook of the Midnight Express's boss). His pager password is 'I love you for ten thousand years' - and while this concept may seem wildly ethereal, it too is limited, merely a relative measure of time.

It doesn't take too much for one to analyse such a concept in relation to Hong Kong itself. A love limited to ten thousand years - just another lease in a land built on leases. And after that? The future remains uncertain. Returning to Takeshi, we return to the present. As Brigitte tells us: 'Someone who likes pineapples today may not like pineapples tomorrow. People will change.' Yet for Takeshi, it is a concept which has become ingrained in his mind - a connection which makes up his own identity even when the external facts have changed. Compare Tony Leung Kar-Fei in Ashes Of Time when he tells us that all he remembers is his love of peach blossoms - it is a characteristic of himself because it connects him to the memories that make him who he is.

In the end, Takeshi can no longer deny the external truth - that May is now only in his past. In a moment of classic psychological projection, he consumes all the unwanted, rejected cans of pineapple that signify his love. This is a simultaneous last-ditch attempt to bring these symbols within himself, the symbol being a substitute for the real person, as well as being an inevitable rejection, given that his body will not take such an extreme. In desperation, he goes to the Midnight Express stall to seek out the other May - all we know of her is her name, and so it is obvious that again Takeshi is seeking a symbolic substitute. And again he is unsuccessful.

What follows is a classic study of Takeshi's very identity. Whilst it may seem like he is merely wallowing as he calls just about every woman he has ever known, we find him bringing each of his memories - identifiers of his personal identity - to the surface. And each is cruelly destroyed by reality. His body then throws up the pineapples, the belated rejection as he purges himself of May (and the personal identity he has carved out for her) whom he vows never to go out with again.

Time for a new start, or at least that is the impression we get from Takeshi. This is the moment he meets Brigitte again. By our understanding of convention, we see his move as a rebound. Yet there is something undeniably fresh about their meeting: him incessantly asking questions, her invariably ignoring him. As yet he knows nothing of her - she isn't a part of his history. His first words show the very cosmopolitan nature of Hong Kong - he tries to know her, but he doesn't even know what language she speaks, so he repeats his question in four languages. They find a common tongue (Takeshi's face lighting up as he tells of his Taiwanese roots) yet Brigitte gives nothing away.

At the very least, if nothing more, they share a room for the night. They share physical space in the same way that so many individuals share the geography of Hong Kong. She sleeps whilst he is awake. They pass time. And they part. This time Takeshi has no relative values to play with - no personal traits which he can hold as her identity with layered emotional meanings. All he can be sure of is that she is a pretty woman in a wig - who should have clean shoes. And what can he take away from that? What memory is that? In the end, it is her small act of requiting his presence - by giving him the happy birthday message, that forms something which he can treasure - a requited memory to identify her by.

Brigitte ends her role by assassinating her smuggling contact, a Caucasian barman. His subplot is hinted at as we see him with an American accented south-east Asian barmaid, whom he makes love to whilst she wears a wig like Brigitte. Who is pretending to be who? Brigitte's final shot is a blurred freeze frame of her sans wig: once again, her surface identity has shifted, perhaps because the contact is dead the wig no longer means anything. Compare Carina Lau's response in Ashes Of Time when Leslie Cheung displays her husband's scarf, and she works out that he has died: 'To me, the scarf no longer means anything.' This confirms the idea that signifiers of identity are in themselves hollow, when separated from the emotional connections which they signify.

The second story starts with Takeshi telling us that Faye Wong (whom he has just bumped into before leaving the story) will fall in love with another man - and the camera falls on another cop, Tony Leung. We never learn of Tony's name. He is a uniformed cop, and we can see from his epaulettes that he is no. 663 (though he is mistakenly referred to as 633 several times - a genuine mistake...?). Other than that, he has no name (the opposite of the oft-mentioned but never-seen May). Again, we learn of a trait of his: he buys chef salads. When asked by Faye what he likes, his reply is 'chef salad'. Then we learn that it is actually his girlfriend's favourite dish - or so he thinks. Once more a trait, or a perceived trait of a lover has made it into the identity of the protagonist - a personal symbol with emotional connotations.

This time we do see the lover, played by Valerie Chow. We see a lyrical representation via Tony's memories, and then we learn that she has moved on. Unable to accept her rejection, Tony withdraws as we are made to realise how much of his outlook has been coloured by his ex. The daffy extreme of this is Tony addressing his household goods. These scenes are interesting partly because of the very reactions they spark in viewers - love them or loathe them, most viewers can agree that what Tony is doing is not normal. The reason is because very few people will say that household goods have emotions: and communication is only meaningful when made with a soul capable of understanding and responding.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

One may find it hard to correlate Faye's free-form living with the idea of rootlessness, but consider this: WKW is not just putting forth the idea that the rootless are simply unassimilated individuals on the edge of a central society. Though she is merely an interloper at Tony's house, Faye's influence means not that she becomes at home in his house, but that the house itself changes with her presence. This is almost the story of a society like Hong Kong: created by fusion and hybrids. We see how Tony's outlook changes via touches of dramatic irony: 'I feel change coming... my senses have become sharper... I didn't know ketchup sardines had a black bean flavour,' he says when he eats from the tins relabelled by Faye. And when Faye arrives with a bag of goldfish and is shocked to see him already at home, she freezes - the one thing she rarely does in the film - and suddenly becomes very ill-at-ease. After massaging her legs Tony puts on - you guessed it - California Dreamin', saying (without even looking) that it is his girlfriend's favourite. The house, which holds so many memories of his ex, has now had its identity 'relabelled' by Faye.

However, something is behind these ideas which takes a cock-eyed look at change itself. For example, when Tony talks to his new possessions he seems to disapprove of their guises. 'I've been wanting to tell you this for a long time,' he says to his suddenly new towel. 'You've changed. We need to have character. Even if she's not coming back, you can't give up yourself because of her.' WKW has bled this need for 'character' beyond the confines of discrete individuals and on to objects. This seems ridiculous, considering the fact that objects - especially in consumerist society - have an inherent interchangeability.

But in the WKW world, sometimes even humans can be interchangeable. Consider the scene in Ashes Of Time when Leslie Cheung dreams of being touched - the dream melting into a four-way displacement of obsession. In Chungking, when Tony sees his towel weep he feels pleased: 'Even though its form had changed, its identity remained the same.' What does such an idea say for Tony's outlook as a whole? For a while he doesn't discern the very differences which have been created by Faye, which we have been made to see. Despite what looks like a unique identity stemming from Faye, Tony is seeing something more universal - ignoring the form.

For Tony, in his mind has a carved out identity of 'girlfriend'. This is an identity itself, not the person who is to play the role. Originally it is Valerie Chow, but then Faye comes close to filling that identity (close, but not quite, given the open ending). WKW retains the uniform of the air-stewardess as it reminds us, not of Valerie herself, but of the 'girlfriend' identity that she had with Tony. And so, when we see Valerie for the last time, she is out of uniform because we (and Tony) no longer see her as being in that role. When we see Faye in uniform, it shows a certain nexus she has reached with what we see as the identity of 'girlfriend'.

Or, to put things in a simpler way, it doesn't matter who Tony falls in love with. Just as he doesn't discern the difference between one towel and another, so to with the actual person whom he is in love with - one can go so far as to say that the form has changed, but the identity of 'lover' remains the same. At first, such a concept may seem to devalue the characters, but that simply isn't the case. Whilst we can say that every individual has their own personal identity, such concepts cannot account for individual perception of others. The mind does not work by absolutes - we have to work with relative values, by association.

In fact, what WKW achieves (or surpasses) is close to the very concept which critics wanted him to expand upon in In The Mood For Love: namely the idea that the protagonists are not unique. It's not that WKW punctures our belief that we, like the protagonists, are unique, unfathomable and singular. It's just that he presents (as ever) a more interesting idea: the idea that our relationships are not built upon our own personal, unique identities, but on the identities we impose on each other. Our 'Dream Lover', as the title of Faye Wong's Cranberries cover version reads, is an internal concept - whereas the actual person is a different individual: a stranger whom our Takeshi may bump into. Love is the identity which is carried through, whereas the form itself is prone to change.

If we only look at this from Tony's point of view, we might accuse WKW of mistreating the human value of his characters - particularly as we may be sensitive about Tony treating the identities of the two women in his life with ambivalence. Yet WKW has gone to the trouble of fleshing out his characters - not in traditional characterisations, but nevertheless with a profoundly human warmth - an example being the energy of Faye's persona which leaps from the screen. This is because they are inherently individuals - an idea which underpins a respect for humanity. Yet WKW makes us acknowledge that, despite their inherent individuality, to others they can (perhaps must) have an identity which is not absolute, not inherent to themselves.

Take Takeshi, for example. He is the flip-side of what we see with Tony. Though he too has been dumped, we are given some kind of insight (even if it is in the form of a conceit) into how the relationship ended. With Tony, we are told that Valerie 'wanted to try other flavours' - almost an assertion of independence itself - but we aren't given any particular reasons why Tony has ceased fitting the identity of 'lover'. With Takeshi, he tells us that May split up with him because he was becoming, 'unbearably unlike [Yamaguchi] Momoe's husband, Miura Tomokazu.' These foreign superstars are ciphers - roles for the two lovers to play. Cynically, we may say that such a relationship is based on a false premise: how can there be love if the two must play the roles of other people? Yet, are we supposed to believe that what we call love is based on some absolute factor, something inherent? WKW wisely offers no answer on this, for we would otherwise have to throw open the whole question of what love is. But the idea of the imposed roles does hint that May's love is directed toward the uncertain identity of 'lover' symbolised by Tomokazu, rather than the personal, uniqueness  of Takeshi himself. It is this notional Tomokazu whom Takeshi curses as he runs up stairs after hearing a man on May's phone. Eventually, after realising May will not return to him Takeshi experiences an epiphany: 'As May the 1st begins, I come to understand something: to May, I am just a can of pineapple.' He is - to her - just another used form: another interchangeable product.

But, in closing, let's not take things too far. WKW has been called an optimist and a profound humanist with good reason. He gives his characters uniqueness and profoundly internal thought, and they are capable of yearning for singular, absolute concepts (like the single, eternal lover they so often cannot have) with a longing that almost confirms their life. What WKW does is to introduce a degree of ambiguity which allows us to doubt those all too perfect, too absolute ideals - showing just how those ideals conflict with reality. There is no rant in the film: we aren't told to dislike consumerism and its associated transience (if pressed, WKW will give some noncommittal comment on how 'cities are looking similar - you get McDonalds everywhere'), but the idea which does filter through is that modern society magnifies (but doesn't actually create) the concept of a lack of identity - or the concept of identities which are not absolute. We are drawn into the internal worlds of the characters as this is the only way we can see something unique to them; the slither of thought that marks them out from otherwise being another shoulder to bump into. And it is typical WKW that we are able to see both sides of the equation at once: the very personality of the characters which marks them out as inherent individuals, celebrating this very concept; as well as the inescapable idea that, from an external point of view, identity is relative, interchangeable and not absolute. WKW does all this without compromising what, at its heart, is a film which moves and lifts in a manner which concepts and theories cannot fully account for - and the result is a film which has ethereal brilliance as well as latent, yet undeniably profound depth.