An arty, pretentious, foreign-language film with subtitles? Normally this sort of cod-meaningful, film student work would be right up my navel-gazing street. However, I'm not sure if Duoluo tianshi (Fallen Angels) ever hit the spot for me. At least, not as much as it did for Michelle Reis.
The film revolves around three characters in separate areas of Hong Kong's underworld. Leon Lai is Wong Chi-Ming, a hit man and sometimes "debt" collector, who works with the masturbating Reis as a partner in crime.
This element is probably the least successful, if in part due to its overstated direction. Most of it is shot in a fisheye/keyhole lens style (i.e. whatever is nearest the camera is larger and distorted). This is interspersed with slo-mo, crooked angles, high-speed, black and white and killings heavily indebted to John Woo's pre-US work (Ying Huang Boon Sik, et al). Credit must be given, however, for the documentary-style realism, particularly the way "blood" spatters on the camera. Not a gore-enhancing spray, but minute specks, giving a subliminal illusion that what you're watching is real.
Takeshi Kaneshiro appears as the most likeable character, an insane hyperactive who "talks" to camera and runs after-hour businesses. That is, when the shops are closed, he breaks in and does his own thing be it molesting a dead pig in a butcher's, tearing off a man's clothes in a launderette or force-feeding a family in a stolen ice cream van.
However, when the gimmickry settles down and you start to become involved with the interwoven storylines, any reservations start to fade. The coldness of two of the three central characters is displaced by the minutiae of the supporting cast. Karen Mok as "Blondie" adds humour to Lai's otherwise steely interpretation, while there are touching moments between Kaneshiro's He Zhiwu and his father, played by Chen Wanlei. Many of these scenes are shot with Zhiwu filming his father on videotape, meaning that writer/director Kar-wai Wong gets to intersperse real camcorder footage with the rest of his hand-held studies.
Not a first-class view, then, but a worthwhile look at urban violence and inner city alienation. A very well done perseverance, but how cool can something be that ends with a song by The Flying Pickets?
The film revolves around three characters in separate areas of Hong Kong's underworld. Leon Lai is Wong Chi-Ming, a hit man and sometimes "debt" collector, who works with the masturbating Reis as a partner in crime.
This element is probably the least successful, if in part due to its overstated direction. Most of it is shot in a fisheye/keyhole lens style (i.e. whatever is nearest the camera is larger and distorted). This is interspersed with slo-mo, crooked angles, high-speed, black and white and killings heavily indebted to John Woo's pre-US work (Ying Huang Boon Sik, et al). Credit must be given, however, for the documentary-style realism, particularly the way "blood" spatters on the camera. Not a gore-enhancing spray, but minute specks, giving a subliminal illusion that what you're watching is real.
Takeshi Kaneshiro appears as the most likeable character, an insane hyperactive who "talks" to camera and runs after-hour businesses. That is, when the shops are closed, he breaks in and does his own thing be it molesting a dead pig in a butcher's, tearing off a man's clothes in a launderette or force-feeding a family in a stolen ice cream van.
However, when the gimmickry settles down and you start to become involved with the interwoven storylines, any reservations start to fade. The coldness of two of the three central characters is displaced by the minutiae of the supporting cast. Karen Mok as "Blondie" adds humour to Lai's otherwise steely interpretation, while there are touching moments between Kaneshiro's He Zhiwu and his father, played by Chen Wanlei. Many of these scenes are shot with Zhiwu filming his father on videotape, meaning that writer/director Kar-wai Wong gets to intersperse real camcorder footage with the rest of his hand-held studies.
Not a first-class view, then, but a worthwhile look at urban violence and inner city alienation. A very well done perseverance, but how cool can something be that ends with a song by The Flying Pickets?