I just watched the last of my 5 Wong Kar Wai (Wang Jia Wei in Mandarin) DVDs. I bought the set in Beijing and have been really good about spacing them out a bit. My least favourite was Ashes of Time which was a sword fighting kind of thing. I mean it was okay, but nothing great. And there was Days of Being Wild. That one was good, about a guy who treats women badly and is looking for his Filipino mother. I liked Happy Together better, which was about a couple of gay HKers in Argentina. Chungking Express is the most famous one and it’s neat how it is really two movies stuck together with the tiniest bit of glue. I love the cans of pineapple thing; if I was a character in a story that’s the kind of thing I’d want to do.
But my favourite movie as a whole was tonight’s: Fallen Angels. It had a killer in it, but it was no standard HK action flick. It was about how he works with a partner he never connects with. There’s also a mute character who breaks into businesses at night and assaults people into accepting his business. It feels like it’s going to do the Chungking Express thing and be two movies living on one disc, but it actually pulls them both together. These movies never really let you know where they’re going. I find myself just having to ride along with them and only think about it afterwards. You know, like everything else.
