Fallen Angels
Duo luo tian shi
Hong Kong
1995
90 Min
CantoneseSubtitled in English
100 Views
Duo luo tian shi
Synopsis
Wong Kar-wai’s Fallen Angels is a sequel of sorts to the director’s 1994 U.S. breakthrough Chungking Express. Expanding on the latter’s style, themes, and mood, Fallen Angels is set in the surreal milieu of urban, nighttime Hong Kong. As with the filmmaker’s other features, plot takes a back seat to mood. The wisp of a narrative intercuts two story lines. The first follows a hitman (Leon Lai) who finds that the assassin’s life has slowly lost its allure. Complicating his life is his beautiful contact (Michele Reis, a former Miss Hong Kong winner) who pines after him with fetishistic ardor, although the two have never met in their nearly three-year partnership. In another part of the city, He (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a mute, boyish ex-convict, makes a living by sneaking into and running businesses after hours. Still living with his father who runs the Chungking Mansions hotel, the restless Ho falls for Cherry (Charlie Yeung), a woman getting over her breakup with the offscreen Johnny. The movie follows these episodic romances almost half-heartedly as with Wong’s other films, and digressionary moments attract much of the camera’s distracted gaze. This visually stylish and unabashedly effusive work is considered by some critics to be the quintessential Wong film.
(From http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:135838)
Director
Wong Kar-wai
Born in Shanghai, he moved to Hong Kong with his parents at the age of five. Coming from the Mainland and speaking only Mandarin and Shanghainese, he had a difficult period of adjustment to Cantonese speaking Hong Kong, spending hours in movie theatres with his mother. He made his directing debut in 1988 with As Tears Go By, produced by Alan Tang. It was a crime melodrama of the kind then hugely popular, and with heavy borrowings from Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1974), but already displayed one of his principal trademarks in its atmospheric and sometimes expressionistic color palette. It is his only box office hit to date. Wong went on to direct several more feature films in the 1990s, among these were Chungking Express (1994), Fallen Angels (1995), Ashes of Time (1994). His first major international recognition was at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival where he won the Best Director prize for Happy Together (1997). The filming of In the Mood for Love (2000) had to be shifted from Beijing… read more
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Joshua Robert Hathaway
27Oct09
A fast paced colored hyper surreal world where morality is unimportant and where love is suppose to connect the viewer to characters with little to no depth and fruitless actions. Although this film often times transports you to a visually stunning world, the lack of content is difficult to avoid and leaves the viewer with little to grab a hold of at the end.
Anthony
21Aug09
I maybe need to watch this film again, but of Wong Kar-wai's films I've seen, I probably responded least favorably to this one. I simply did not like the characters and thought that the cinematography wasn't up to his usual standards (although the dvd transfer may have been partly to blame).
Better to start with Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love...
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By Connor S on November 27, 2009
As a person who watches way too many Asian action/martial arts films, it was glaringly obvious to me that parts of this film were riffing on John Woo’s HK movies (the Killer and Hard Boiled) in how… read review
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By Ryan Diego Broughan on November 6, 2009
A eerily dreamy film, it follows two alienated Hong Kong males’ quirky efforts for romance. Hands down my favorite Wong Kar Wai flick, if not favorite film in general. It’s the type of film I feel… read review
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By Scott D. Strader on August 12, 2009
First movie I’ve watched from this director.
More of a formalist study than a dramatic one. The individual scenes are composed as microcosms emphasizing a primary theme. People occupy the same… read review
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By neo_noir on January 23, 2009
One of my favorite movies. Every so often in the late nights I’d watch my shitty blown-up ipod copy on my computer rather than pop in the dvd, but it doesn’t matter, it’s a great film. Hell sometimes… read review
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