Fallen Angels (1995)
Reviewed by: pat00139 on 2007-03-04
Summary: Another great movie by Wong Kar-Wai
This movie ends what I call director Wong Kar-Wai’s prolific period. It only spanned 2 years and included 3 movies, but a quick glance at his sparse filmography will prove my point. In the ‘Chungking Express’ DVD, here, Mr. Tarentino says this movie would be like the 3rd story to the movie. Mr. Wong just decided to make a whole other movie instead. It certainly has the same elements, but is far more experimental and creative. As with his other movies, the plot is only incidental to what the movie means. Also like in his other movies, this movie has the themes of dreams and failure to be able to talk to other people.

Nobody can say Wong Kar-Wai doesn’t have a sense of humour, though. Even the few seconds of Mr. Kaneshiro doing the Faye Wong-dance from ‘Chunking Express’ makes this movie worth watching. Mr. Kaneshiro plays a mute person. It’s a story involving a can of pinapples. Anyway, in his interior monologe, he says ‘you need to talk face to face’. He can’t talk. He can’t say what he wants. If that’s not being trapped in your own little world and not being able to communicate with others, then I don’t know what is. His partner for a nice part of the movie is the lovely Charlie Yeung, who played the girl with the eggs and donkey in ‘Ashes of Time’, who always talks but never listens to anybody. Isn’t that just the perfect microcosm for Wong Kar-Wai?

Then you have Leon Lai, a person who kills other people for a living. He doesn’t want to listen to other people. Just wants to do as he pleases, he doesn’t want to make any decisions, just wander through life, oblivious to the people he’s met in the past. Not wanting to have a past. One girl he meets is Karen Mok, a girl who changed her hair colour to blonde because she wants people to remember her. Even after she reveals that to Mr. Lai, she says she has a mole on her face, and that’s how he can remember her this time. The other girl is his handler who’s obsessed with him. Her hair always covers her eyes, she can’t see anything. She cleans his apartment, she’s good for him, but he doesn’t want to make any sort of commitment because, you see, that would involve a decision. The one time he does decide something, well…

I can spend another few paragraphs talking about the style of the movie, but I’ll try to restrict myself to just one. The first thing you see in the movie is a black and white shot, by a fish-eye lens, at a strange angle. That about sums up the movie. Throughout the movie, you’ll be assaulted by blurred action, strange angles, unusual film choices and time-lapse photography. It’s so different and your attention is always on screen. You never know what’s coming next. My favorite shot of the movie is the black and white time-lapse shot through a rainy window of Takashi Kaneshiro and Charlie Yeung. It’s very simple but it grabs your attention and stays in your mind.

This was the second Wong Kar-Wai movie I saw and I knew I found something good. After seeing ‘In the Mood for Love’, this movie showed me the kind of range Wong Kar-Wai had. It prepared me for ‘As Tears Go By’ and ‘Days of Being Wild’. I did not, however, fully appreciate Mr. Wong’s talent until I had seen the DJ Shadow music video ‘Six Days’, which Mr. Wong directed. This movie, however, really cemented my impression that Wong Kar-Wai is talented, and even after seeing all his movies, I don’t douby my impression one bit.
Reviewer Score: 10