Get Your Reps In: Wong Kar-wai’s “Fallen Angels” Is a Dreamy Follow-Up to “Chungking Express”

Fallen Angels (1995)

Wong Kar-Wai’s Fallen Angels is a happily bifurcated film, not just in story, but sometimes within the same shot. Even when a violent bar fight erupts behind a character contemplating their life, they’re so completely of a piece with nocturnal street chaos that desensitization and transcendence look the same.

That’s just one of many exquisite images in Wong’s artfully halved follow-up to Chungking Express (1994). In the film’s first layer, a hit man (Leon Lai) and his handler (Michelle Reis) try to keep a professional distance, despite the suggestion of a touchless love affair—a plot that Wong originally intended to include in Chungking Express.

In the second story, Wong illuminates the obscurity and stylization of the former narrative with the near-slapstick tale of mute fugitive Ho Chi-mo (Takeshi Kineshiro), who breaks into small businesses after hours and forces his services on unsuspecting customers. Ho is something like the jester version of the other 20-somethings in Fallen Angels, all of whom cling to the possibility of opportunity, ownership and self-actualization in pre-handover Hong Kong.

Originally reviewed as a hyperbolic appendage to Chungking Express, Fallen Angels stands all on its own with a little distance. Catch the beautifully bleary film April 6 at Clinton Street Theater.

ALSO PLAYING:

5th Avenue: The Hobbit (1977), April 7-9. Academy: The Cat Returns (2002), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), April 7-13. Cinema 21: 12 Angry Men (1957), April 8. Clinton: A Colt Is My Passport (1967), April 10. Empirical: Spirited Away (2001), April 5 and 8. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), April 6. Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Princess Mononoke (1997), April 7. Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), April 8. Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), Ponyo (2008), April 9. Hollywood: Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), April 6. The Outsiders (1983, director’s cut), April 7-10, 12. Time Bandits (1981), April 7. Blazing Saddles (1974), April 8. Frankenhooker (1990), April 8-9. Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), April 9. Finding Nemo (2003), April 10. Shaolin Challenges Ninja (1978), April 11.