Falling Down

I've perused a few of the reviews of Fallen Angels and am rather surprised by them. I understand how easy it is to be distracted by Doyle's lush photography, and the general Hong Kong cool that Wong Kar-wai does as well as any director.

Although the characters are slight and odd, they all seem to share loneliness in common and the inability to express emotions in any meaningful way. Time and again, the characters demonstrate damaged psyches. Wong Chi-Ming is the hitman. His partner doesn't seem to be able to tell him that she's in love with him. He, too, finds it challenging to meet women. The exuberant blond woman who dates the hitman can't even hold to him that long.

The hitman wants to do something else, but isn't very good at anything else. Maybe he'll open a restaurant. He knows he should get out of the business if he wants to live a long life, but what life would he live?

He Zhiwu is mute throughout the film except in voiceovers. There's implications he talks (since he arranges dates with a woman). He doesn't get along that well with people, coercing them to pay for business that he co-opts after hours, when the business is closed. He has fun riding a dead pig, and bullying a man to get a haircut, and eat ice cream with the family. He thinks he's fallen in love, but the woman still pines for someone else.

He does childish things with his dad. Zhiwu is in a kind of arrested development, trying to act like a kid, but still exuding the coolness of a Hong Kong adult.

If angels are meant to be happy all the time (and there's doubt that this is true), then these fallen angels have lost their way. They seek, but cannot find, except in moments as fleeting as a ride on lamp-lit streets through a lonely Hong Kong tunnel.