Thoughts from the committee
Set by Wong Kar Wai and shot by Christopher Doyle in a frenetic, luridly-lit pre-dawn pre-Handover Hong Kong, Fallen Angels is a mid-career highlight for Wong and a darker but independent companion piece for his earlier, cheerier Chungking Express, which similarly combined two hyper-stylised, idiosyncratic vignettes.
This woozy neo-noir, reverberating with a Massive Attack-heavy trip hop score, follows a hitman not short on money (Leon Lai) who decides to retire after one last – inevitably botched – contract, his love-struck assistant (Michelle Reis) with whom he communicates by message and fax, and a mute minor conman (Takeshi Kaneshiro) who forces stolen goods on street retailers in a series of hilarious scenes, one involving the force-feeding of ice cream. Scenes now iconic and imitated for their saturated colour and blurred slow motion follow the characters’ isolation from crammed subway trains and noodle houses, and from the back of Kaneshiro’s motorbike, through their sharply observed and frequently funny voiceovers.
Fallen Angels deftly bridges the gap between Wong’s earlier, active films, and the more reflective, melancholy tone in his films of the early 2000s.
“This is a film in which the rush of a train, the blur of shoes on pavement, the rain on a window or the stain on a tablecloth carry as much tender emotion as the sad eyes of a forlorn lover or the moon above the skyscrapers in the Hong Kong sky. Don’t miss your fleeting precious connection with this remarkable film.” – Adrian Martin