Fallen Angels

A chance mention of the 2002 film Hero last week sent me back to Wong Kar Wai’s 1995 film Fallen Angels yesterday (the connection being cameraman Christopher Doyle) and was very glad of the revisit - it’s a great amphetamine-fueled rush of a film, audacious and exhilarating, and featuring a cast that is impossibly cool, stylish and beautiful (and endlessly smoking) as they go about their nights of being wild on the wet neon-lit streets of Hong Kong. I especially loved Michelle Reis’ forlorn fixer, her scenes where she enjoys some “reveries” set my pulse racing, and she’s gorgeous enough to endure Wong Kar Wai’s penchant for ultra-wide lenses. My only regret is that I didn't precede the film with a screening of Chunking Express which Fallen Angels riffs on. Film also has the best Most Delightfully Unexpected Use of a Song I've heard since Harmony Korine’s appropriation of Brittney Spears for Spring Breakers, with The Flying Pickets’ a cappella re-write of Yazoo’s Only You…