Film Studies - Lecture: Love in the City - Romance, Loneliness and Urban Modernity

Wednesday 27 January 2027

What does it mean to fall in love in a city where everything seems to move too quickly? Using Chungking Express as our starting point, this lecture explores how Wong transforms Hong Kong’s crowded urban spaces into landscapes of emotional isolation and unexpected intimacy. We will examine his visual techniques, including step-printing, unconventional framing, expressive colour and popular music, and consider how these shape our experience of time and emotion. We will also explore the film’s relationship with Hong Kong’s rapidly changing urban culture in the years preceding the 1997 handover. Through close analysis and discussion, we will consider how Wong reinvents romantic comedy and crime cinema to capture the contradictions of modern city life.

Film Studies - Wong Kar-wai: Love, Time and the City

Few filmmakers have captured the beauty, loneliness and emotional complexity of modern life quite like Wong Kar-wai.

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