One reason I
appreciate having
Fallen Angels in our home library is that it
adds another layer to Wong Kar Wai's explorations of Hong Kong.
A deep seated premise of Wong's Hong Kong films is what geographer
Doreen Massey calls the "throwntogetherness" of place. What this means is that the importance of place to daily life lies in how it causes us to be "thrown together" with others. Different places throw people (and things) together in different ways. Some people (and things) with whom we are thrown together we expect and want, but there are also those relationships we don't control or desire. Nonetheless, we have to find ways to live with all of the myriad others with whom we share a place. Every character in each of Wong's Hong Kong films is an "other" to someone else, and the intensity of the city's urban density means that characters are in constant negotiation with others over what kinds of relationships they are going to have with different people. This sense of throwntogetherness, and the implications it has for unexpected and chance meetings, is the thin thread that holds together the stories in
Fallen Angels and its companion
Chungking Express (1994).
Originally posted on:
Short-Circuit Signs