“Fallen Angels” (1995)
Intended as a portion of “Chungking Express” and marked by the same dreamy stylistics that made the prior film such an ethereal delight, “Fallen Angels” takes a decidedly more fatalistic look at life, death and everything in between. Once again composed of two stories, Wong Kar-wai and ever-brilliant DP Christopher Doyle luxuriate in flourishes, damn near sexualizing the conquests of a hitman (Leon Lai) carrying on a questionable partnership with a woman (Michelle Reis). Reis’ nameless vixen supplies Lai’s hitman with target info and cleans his apartment in a pining way that feels like a polar extreme of ‘Chunking’s happy-go-lucky Faye Wong. “Fallen Angels” tells stories of longing, of words unsaid, memories fading in a city without a name (Hong Kong is shot with a dreamy elegance that makes it feel both anonymous and utterly specific). The second story involves Takeshi Kaneshiro’s gentle mute pursuing a woman (Charlie Yeung) reeling from a breakup. It’s the heart of the film and a single scene where Kaneshiro remembers his father via videotapes he’d made of their day-to-day life is heartbreaking in its sincerity. Elsewhere, the characters stumbling the deserted streets and seedy alleys that dot the landscape of “Fallen Angels” are alternately chasing hazy dreams or moving through a world distanced from a more ordinary life. Which all contributes to it seeming like a weightless endeavor on the surface, when in fact “Fallen Angels” is pop-culture poetry, a film that gradually reveals itself and revels in an outpouring of deeply felt emotion. [A-]
“Ashes of Time” (1994)
Before there was “The Grandmaster,” there was “Ashes of Time,” Wong Kar-wai’s first go-round at the Chinese literary and filmic wuxia (literally: “Martial Hero”) genre. And it didn’t have a much easier journey to the screen than its upcoming cousin—Wong shot for over a year, with the production suffering numerous delays and rumored budget overruns. Boasting an all-star cast of major Hong Kong stars, arguably only subsequently outshone by the wattage of “2046,” “Ashes of Time,” however was a notorious flop. A restored, rescored and shorter version “Ashes of Time Redux” was released internationally in 2008 and did better, as of course by that time Wong Kar-wai had established himself on the international arthouse circuit. But whichever version you see (and it’ll most likely be the Redux cut, since the reason for it was the deterioration of the original theatrical cut’s negative), it’s not difficult to fathom why the film failed to find much of an audience at first. Wrapped in semi-mythological, period package, the story is maddeningly elliptical, overpopulated with enigmatic characters whose identities shift and blend into one another as they reminisce and wax poetic about affection spurned, the nature of memory and the self-defeating lengths people go to to “win” the unwinnable game of love. But it is also quite extraordinarily beautiful to look at, with Wong experimenting with painterly post-production effects that enhance Christopher Doyle’s legendary, hypnotic shotmaking, and one particular fight scene, in which the assassin in question (Tony Leung Chui-Wai, the nearest thing to a Wong muse) must fend off seemingly hundreds of opponents while going blind, is masterfully, thrillingly evoked. Indeed, though the film may frustrate attempts to piece together a coherent plot, it’s arguably more successful than “The Grandmaster” in achieving a sustained mood, with the overtly poetic voiceover and dialogue perfectly suited to the dreamy, fluttery, sensual imagery, whether it’s bloody death or wistful regret that is being depicted. Essentially the story details an assassin’s agent (Leslie Cheung) whose woman (Maggie Cheung) pines for him even after she married his brother to spite him, who encounters a series of swordsmen, a magical wine purported to erase memory, a beautiful but penniless girl who wants to avenge her brother, and a quasi-incestuous, identical brother/sister duo who may or may not, in fact, be the same person. What it all means is anyone’s guess, but how it feels is more the point, and its heady, drifting lyricism, that marked a slight departure for Wong from the more pop-culture sensibility of what had come before, makes “Ashes of Time” worth reevaluating now. [B-]
