Wong Kar-wai’s “Chungking Express” opens with a blur of color, a series of frenetic images capturing the crowded alleyways of urban Hong Kong. As he chases a suspect, Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) brushes past a woman wearing a blonde wig (Brigitte Lin). “This was the closest we ever got,” he says in a voiceover, “but 57 hours later, I fell in love with this woman.” For Wong Kar-wai, there’s something erotic about the concept of time. Like the policeman in “Chungking Express,” many of his characters define love in relation to time. Wong’s previous film, “Days of Being Wild,” began with a very similar scene—between Leslie Cheung and Maggie Cheung—in which love was also crystallized into a single moment.

The woman in the blonde wig and 223 share a moment in time but they also share a quickly approaching deadline—the 1st of May—the date 223 has set to give up on his girlfriend, and the date by which the woman in the blonde wig must recover her stolen shipment of drugs. If 223’s girlfriend doesn’t take him back by May 1, then their love, like the 30 cans of pineapple he collects in mourning, “will also expire.” For the woman in the blonde wig, the consequences won’t be quite so romantic. The shared deadline becomes a symbol of common betrayal for both characters, even if neither is aware of it.

The concept of time—in a slightly different sense—also manifests itself in the film with the repetition of music. In the first part of the film, the woman in the blonde wig drinks in a bar while reggae music plays on the jukebox. The same song repeats again in a later scene in the same bar, just before the woman in the blonde wig returns to settle a score. In the second part of the film, the song “California Dreamin’” figures even more prominently. Faye (Faye Wong) plays it almost incessantly while working at her fast food stall. In both cases, the repetitions are diegetic, occurring within the world of the characters. It is as though the characters resist change through repetition, or that Wong uses repetition to confuse chronology.

For the two characters in the second part of “Chungking Express”—Faye and Cop 633— “California Dreamin’” is the definitive theme song for their awkward romance. In several shots of Faye and 633 (Tony Leung), Wong uses a variation of the blur technique he used to begin the film. With the camera stationary, he shows 633 and Faye frozen in slow motion while colorful silhouettes rush across the foreground. In the first part of the film, 223 and the woman in the blonde wig both rush to keep up with the speed of the city; in the second, 633 and Faye watch as time passes them by. Of all the film’s characters, 633 is the most resisting to change—“It takes time to get used to things”—and the least likely to accept that time can change people, like the women he and 223 love.