BROADWAY, NEW YORK, USA. — Fallen Angels is a champagne-soaked 1925 comedy by Noël Coward. The story follows two wealthy, upper-class best friends who, with their husbands away for a golf weekend, discover that the irresistible Frenchman they both had affairs with before they were married is coming back to town.
Lost souls reach out for human connection amidst the glimmering night world of Hong Kong in this hallucinatory, neon-soaked nocturne. Originally conceived as a segment of Chungking Express only to spin off on its own woozy axis, this hyper-cool head rush plays like the dark, moody flip side to Wong’s breakout feature as it charts the subtly interlacing fates of a handful of urban loners, including a coolly detached hitman (Lai), his business partner (Reis), who secretly yearns for him, and a mute delinquent (Kaneshiro) who wreaks mischief by night.
Swinging between hardboiled noir and slapstick lunacy with giddy abandon, Fallen Angels is both a dazzling city symphony and a poignant meditation on love, loss, and longing in a metropolis that never sleeps.
The film looks superb. It works as a great introduction to a master wordsmith, but it is difficult being British beyond England’s shores.
In cinemas from Thursday, October 22.
