Two years before forming The Mamas & the Papas, John Phillips wrote California Dreamin’ while living in New York City with his wife and soon-to-be band member, Michelle, who at the time was eager to return to the West Coast. Ostensibly a song about homesickness, its repeated use in Wong Kar-wai’s heady 1994 romance is especially poignant, soundtracking as it does the burgeoning love affair between Faye Wong’s late-night snack bar worker and Tony Leung Chai-wai’s police officer – a couple themselves longing for escape. By allying the film’s central love story with one of the defining sounds of 1960s counterculture, the director offers a commentary on the West’s pervading influence on Hong Kong culture. But it’s telling that, for all its idealistic promise, Faye ultimately rejects California in favour of Leung’s besotted Cop 663.

• Adam Woodward