Fallen Angels (1995 film)

Hitman Wong Chi-ming talks to a woman, whom he refers to as his "partner". The story begins after Wong responds to her question on whether they are still partners. The pair have never met despite having been business partners for nearly three years; instead they exchange plans via letters and faxes. The partner cleans the hitman's cramped apartment, buys his groceries, and sends him blueprints of assassination locations. Becoming increasingly obsessed with his mysterious nature, she visits a bar Wong frequents and daydreams about him, after which she goes to his apartment and masturbates to the thought of him. Wong carries out a successful hit but is shot in the arm in the process. Increasingly frustrated by the monotone life of contract killing and lack of free will, he decides to quit. He sets up a meeting with his partner but no-shows. Certain that she will come looking for him at his favourite bar, he asks the bartender to suggest "Forget Him" on the jukebox when she arrives. After listening to the song, the partner returns to his apartment, where she masturbates until she breaks down crying. Meanwhile, Wong encounters an eccentric woman nicknamed "Blondie" at a McDonald's, who invites him to her apartment. She believes Wong is the ex-lover who left her for another woman. Wong ultimately decides to meet his partner in person and informs her that he wishes to terminate their partnership. She asks him to do one more job, which he agrees. Afterwards, Wong breaks off his relationship with Blondie, leaving her heartbroken. She bites him in the arm to leave her mark on him. The hitman sets out for his final job, while the partner makes a phone call that gives him away. Wong eventually dies in the showdown, though he is pleased that he has finally been able to achieve free will by making his own decisions and dying. The chaotic Chungking Mansions, where the hitman's partner lives, is also home to Ho Chi-mo, a mute ex-convict who lives with his father. For work, he breaks into other people's businesses at night and sells their goods and services, often forcibly to unwilling customers. He frequently runs into a woman named Charlie, who cries on his shoulder and tells him the same sob story of her ex-boyfriend Johnny leaving her for a girl named Blondie. Ho falls for her but she ultimately stands him up, after which he changes his ways, beginning a friendship and work relationship with a restaurant manager and starting to film things around him with a video camera. His father passes away, and Ho watches the video filmed to remember him. He eventually runs into Charlie while masquerading as a business owner. She is now a stewardess in a new relationship, and does not acknowledge him. Some time later, the partner visits a restaurant, admitting that she has become more cautious and detached following Wong's death. Nearby, Ho is beaten up by a local gang. Seeing this, she realises that he is feeling the same sense of loss as her. They go for a ride on Ho's motorbike. He states that he feels a spark even though they will never be friends or confidants, while she comments that she has not been close to anyone in a while, and even though it is temporary, she enjoys the warmth he brings in the moment. ==Cast==

• Leon Lai as Wong Chi-ming, the hitman • Michele Reis as the hitman's "partner" • Takeshi Kaneshiro as Ho Chi-mo, the mute ex-convict (He Zhiwu in Mandarin) • Charlie Yeung as Charlie, a mysterious girl that Chi-mo frequently runs into • Karen Mok as Situ Hui-Ling, known as "Blondie" • Chan Fai-hung as the man forced to eat ice cream • Chan Man-lei as Ho Chi-mo's father • Toru Saito as Sato, the Japanese restaurant owner • Benz Kong as Ah-Hoi, the hitman's childhood classmate ==Development and production==

Originally conceived by Wong as the third story for 1994's Chungking Express involving a lovesick hitman, it was cut after he decided that it was complete without it, and that the tone of the more demented content was not suited for the more light-hearted Chungking Express. Wong Kar-wai also explained that he had so much pleasure in making the first story of Chungking Express that he felt he had made the film too long, and so he decided to skip the third story in releasing Chungking Express. After the release of Chungking Express, Wong noted that the story of a lovesick hitman still interested him, and so he decided to develop it into Fallen Angels. Wong also decided to "gender-reverse" the attributes of the roles in his new film, with the gun-wielding attributes of Brigitte Lin in Chungking Express being manifested in the hitman Leon Lai would play, while the sneaking-in of Faye Wong in Chungking Express to other apartments was reversed by Takeshi Kaneshiro's character sneaking into shops and businesses in Fallen Angels. In an interview, Wong had this to say: ==Soundtrack==

Typical for a Wong Kar-wai film, Fallen Angels extensively uses pop songs, featuring a largely trip hop soundtrack that appealed to the widespread popularity of trip hop in 1994–1995. Wong Kar-wai initially wished to use the music of English trip hop band Massive Attack but discovered it was too expensive, and so asked his composer in Hong Kong (Frankie Chan) to compose something similar in style. As such, one track that is played prominently throughout the film is "Because I'm Cool" by Nogabe "Robinson" Randriaharimalala. It is a re-orchestration of "Karmacoma" by Massive Attack, and samples the song. Also featured in the Fallen Angels soundtrack is a dream pop version of "Forget Him" sung by Shirley Kwan, a reworking of the original by Teresa Teng, and one of the very few "contemporary" Cantopop songs ever used by Wong Kar-wai in his films. In the film, the song is used by the hitman to indirectly communicate the message to his assistant that he wants her to "forget him", and is also used in the scenes afterwards in the McDonald's restaurant, where it plays over the restaurant's speakers as the hitman and Blondie encounter each other, a scene juxtaposed by the misery and sadness of the assistant crying. In contrast to Wong's other films such as Chungking Express, Fallen Angels' soundtrack displays more 'ethereal pieces', featuring the 1994 avant-garde/experimental ambient piece "Speak My Language" by American avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson. The song is used in scenes where the hitman's assistant visits the bar that the hitman frequents and masturbates in his room out of sexual frustration. The song, a moody track speaking of the living and the dead, is emblematic of the film's highly bleak outlook. In the ending scene, the Flying Pickets version of "Only You" is used, described as the only track in the film to express hopefulness, as the hitman's assistant and the ex-convict find a chance to escape from the film's seemingly perpetual night, and as they end the film seeking emotional redemption in their shared loss and the sunrise that emerges over the Hong Kong skyline. The film's official soundtrack was originally released on CD in 1995 but has since been occasionally re-released. ==Critical reception==

Fallen Angels was released in September 1995, premiering at the 1995 Toronto International Film Festival, where it received considerable critical success and became the focus of the festival for its notable visual style. In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave Fallen Angels three stars out of a possible four. Ebert stated the film appealed to a niche audience including art students, "the kinds of people you see in the Japanese animation section of the video store, with their sleeves cut off so you can see their tattoos", and "those who subscribe to more than three film magazines", but would prove unsuitable for an average moviegoer. Stephen Holden of The New York Times said the film relied more on style than substance and wrote: "Although the story takes a tragic turn, the movie feels as weightless as the tinny pop music that keeps its restless midnight ramblers darting around the city like electronic toy figures in a gaming arcade." In the Village Voice, J. Hoberman wrote:The acme of neo-new-wavism, the ultimate in MTV alienation, the most visually voluptuous flick of the fin de siècle, a pyrotechnical wonder about mystery, solitude, and the irrational love of movies that pushes Wong's style to the brink of self-parody. Hoberman and Amy Taubin both placed Fallen Angels on their lists for the top 10 films of the decade, and the Village Voices decade-end critics poll placed Fallen Angels at No. 10, the highest-ranking of any Wong Kar-wai film. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 95% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 22 reviews, with an average rating of 7.90/10. Critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that he "felt transported back to the 1960s films of Jean-Luc Godard" and praised Fallen Angels as "a film that was not afraid of its audience." Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle described Wong as bringing "tremendous vigor and audacity to the effort, asking us to question the most basic rules of storytelling and commercial filmmaking." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "an exhilarating rush of a movie, with all manner of go-for-broke visual bravura that expresses perfectly the free spirits of [Wong's] bold young people." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 71 out of 100 based on 13 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Reviews on the site highlighted the film's distinctive visual style and unconventional storytelling. TV Guide praised its "extraordinary emotional depth," while Lisa Alspector of the Chicago Reader wrote that Wong "makes these five self-consciously idiosyncratic types—often seen through distorting lenses in cinematographer Christopher Doyle's somber, garish Hong Kong—fully and instantly believable." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "an exhilarating rush of a movie, with all manner of go-for-broke visual bravura that expresses perfectly the free spirits of his bold young people." Critics have described the film's structure as intentionally fragmented: the San Francisco Chronicle called it “an experiment in anti-narrative,” noting that Wong “interweaves [the characters’] stories so casually that his story, for what it's worth, always stays beyond our grasp.” Similarly, Jude D. Russo of The Harvard Crimson wrote that the film's “two storylines intersect occasionally throughout the film...but remain fundamentally separate through most of the film, reflecting the isolation at the movie's heart.” Author Stephen Teo, in the book Wong Kar-wai: Auteur of Time, considered Fallen Angels Wong's most social and political film. Meanwhile, Peter Brunette stated the nonlinear structure and "anti-realist, hyperstylized" cinematography of Fallen Angels and its predecessor Chungking Express pointed towards the future of cinema. Scholars Justin Clemens and Dominic Pettman commented on the social and political undertones of Fallen Angels: by portraying the characters' loneliness, alienation and indecisiveness, the film represents a metaphor for the political climate of contemporary Hong Kong, the impending end of British rule and transition to Chinese rule in 1997. Film critic Thorsten Botz-Bornstein highlighted Fallen Angels as a film that represented Wong's peculiar appeal to both traditional "Eastern" and "Western" audiences—it portrays Hong Kong with "post-colonial modernity" showcased through crammed apartments, public transportation, noodle parlors that were emblematic of modern Asia's consumerism. On the one hand, those elements could not be rightfully called "traditionally Asian"; on the other, Western audience viewed such elements with astounding curiosity. ==Box office==

The film made HK$7,476,025 during its Hong Kong run. On 21 January 1998, the film began a limited North American theatrical run through Kino International. Playing solely at Film Forum in New York City, the film grossed US$13,804 in its opening weekend. The final North American theatrical gross was US$163,145. In 2004, Australian distribution company Accent Film Entertainment released a remastered widescreen version of the film enhanced for 16x9 screens. ==Home media and streaming==

Kino International, who initially distributed the film on DVD, prepared a re-release of the film from a new high-definition transfer on 11 November 2008. Kino released the film on Blu-ray in America on 26 March 2010. It has since gone out of print. The film was picked up by the Criterion Collection and given a new Blu-ray release on 23 March 2021 in a collection of 7 Wong Kar-wai films. Also, Fallen Angels could previously be streamed on FilmStruck (shut down in 2018) and is currently available on The Criterion Collection subscription service channel. In May 2019, Wong Kar Wai announced that all of his films would be remastered by his production studio, Jet Tone Productions, and be distributed in the United States through Janus Films and the Criterion Collection. It was released in the UK on DVD and Blu-ray by Artificial Eye. ==Awards and nominations==