HONG KONG GEM CHRONICLES BROKEN HEARTS, NOT NOSES.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

With the recent box-office success of John Woo's "Broken Arrow" and Jackie Chan in "Rumble in the Bronx," many American filmgoers have been pleasantly introduced to the jaw-dislocating joys of Hong Kong action movies.

Now for something completely different. Although the vast majority of the British crown colony's film output (which is the world's third largest) is action-genre product, Hong Kong boasts a small but vibrant art-film movement. And at the forefront of that is Wong Kar-Wei, whose kinetic and droll dislocated romance, "Chungking Express," shows us a Hong Kong we haven't seen in movies before - and one that feels remarkably like a real place.

The first release from Quentin Tarantino's boutique operation, Rolling Thunder Pictures, "Chungking" is a pop culture-steeped set of overlapping stories about two cops. But similarities to "Pulp Fiction," or typical Hong Kong police movies, end there.

These two cops are in love, and neither of them is having much luck at it. The first, known only by his badge number, 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro), recently has lost a girlfriend named May. He's decided, pretty much unilaterally, to give her until May 1 to come back. As the date arrives and she's still not interested, 223 resolves to get very drunk and fall in love with the first woman who walks into the bar.

She turns out to be an international drug smuggler in a blond wig (Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia), who has just been burned on a big deal by a bunch of Indian immigrants. Though not meant to be 223's love match in any conceivable way, she does give him a gift valuable enough to shake him out of his self-pitying personal soap opera.

No. 223 sometimes stops at a lunch counter frequented by another cop, No. 663 (Tony Leung Chi-Wai). He goes there every night to get a chef's salad for his flight attendant girlfriend. One day she leaves him, and drops off the key to his apartment at the food stand.

This thoroughly intrigues the pixieish countergirl Faye (Faye Wong). Infatuated with 663, Faye lets herself into his apartment in the crowded, ramshackle Chungking Mansions neighborhood while he's on duty. With a boombox blasting out the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'," she cleans up, rearranges things and generally acts like she owns the place.

Distracted by his own sense of loss, 663 barely notices the results of Faye's intrusions, even though in his loneliness he often talks to the objects - towels, a stuffed bear - she'd been messing with all day.

Of innumerable films that have been made on the subjects of urban alienation and romantic dislocation, "Chungking Express" arguably has the most refreshing attitude about the whole unsatisfying situation.

Rather than wringing hands over it, the film, if not its characters, stoically accepts the inevitability of missed connections at the end of the 20th century. It even suggests, especially through Faye's compulsive impishness, that one may as well enjoy the weirdness that seems to be part and parcel of our awkward modern mating stumble.

Dazzlingly shot by Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle, "Chungking Express" is a riot of rushing colored light, pixilated chases, arresting freeze-frames and truly drunken camera work. But these flourishes never distract from the droll human dramas that Wong has so astutely and amusingly worked out. The film's style frames and enhances the uncomfortably but interestingly fractured lives and hearts of its subjects - the elements that provide, after all, the true pulse of any great city.

"Chungking Express" looks like no other Hong Kong film. But it may just be the movie that sees the place, in all of its busy, multidirected confusion, better than any other.

THE FACTS

The film: "Chungking Express" (PG-13; violence, sex, drugs).

The stars: Faye Wang, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Brigitte Lin Chin-Hsia.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Wong Kar-Wai. Produced by Chan Yi-Kan. Released by Miramax Films.

Running time: One hour, 43 minutes.

Playing: Laemmle's Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Laemmle's Monica, Santa Monica.

Our rating: Four Stars.