Seven months of principal photography and two months of editing later, Wong Kar Wai's latest film elicited the usual mix of respect, admiration and confusion. Two months before the film was released, I chanced upon a magazine article detailing what the plot was to have been - a surreal, moody piece with an overpowering lyricism that threatened to best all the previous hyper-romanticism of his earlier works. Not surprisingly, the end product is nothing like what it was reported to be.

Working with no written script, Wong puts his cast of Leon Lai, Michelle Reis, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Charlie Yeung and Karen Mok through the paces of improvisation, and has come up with a film worthy to be the successor and sequel to his wildly successful ChungKing Express.

Once again featuring two stories tenuously linked by a common character, He Zhiwu (Kaneshiro, playing a bloke with the same name as his ChungKing Express character), Wong first introduces us to two lost souls: Wong Zhiming, a hitman (Lai, having a perennial bad hair day during the course of the film) and his nameless agent (Reis, in a breakthrough performance) who have collaborated for 155 weeks without ever having met. During the course of their three year partnership, the two have come to develop a twisted mutual obsession. Their modus operandi forms a particular pattern: he checks into the apartment she has tidied up for him, does the job, and flies to another country for a while. This is when she cleans up the apartment he has just vacated (a nod to ChungKing's latter half), going through his trash to understand his psyche, his personality, covering her own bed with his sheets to savour the distinct scent he leaves behind. On his part, he deliberately leaves behind clues to feed her obsession, to lure her to bars and pubs he has been to, always culminating in a juke-box dedication (a nod to ChungKing once again) that tells her how he feels. And so it has gone on for three years, the two hardened and untrusting cynics playing out their love story in a cautious, wary manner, until the hitman meets a blonde-haired waif (Karen Mok in a role which is a reference to Bridget Lin's blonde-wigged drug dealer in ChungKing) and realises his weariness and loathing for his lifestyle, and decides to call it quits. He rejects both the waif and his agent, although his own obsession with the latter is unfinished. Unfortunately, the broken-hearted agent arranges one last hit to seal their fates; the target: himself....

Meanwhile, the agent lives in a rundown apartment in ChungKing Mansions, where the caretaker's son, He Zhiwu has a chance meeting with her; and so begins the second tale of a fallen, angelic ingenue whose existence is defined by his loneliness and his muteness, the latter condition brought about by his eating a tin of expired pineapples when he was a child of 5 (another reference to ChungKing). Living with his Taiwanese father, He spends his nights raiding shops which have already closed for the day, re-opening them to run his "business", which can be anything ranging from being a hairdresser to selling pork as a butcher, often having to kidnap potential customers - one running gag involves a hapless man with the misfortune to constantly run into him. On one outing as a drink seller, he meets and finds his first love: a jilted young girl Charlie (Charlie Yeung with a very interesting hairdo) and develops a one-sided love affair with her. However, theirs is a union meant for disaster as she cannot forget her ex-lover, and their karma soon comes to an end; she eventually ends up as a flight stewardess (as did Faye Wong's waif in ChungKing) who chooses not to remember him when they next meet at the Midnight Express cafe. As this happens, He tries to change himself, to become a more responsible person; but then his father dies, leaving him all alone to face the world. As the film closes, he again chances upon Reis' agent, and the two lonely, disillusioned individuals share a moment of warmth as the darkened skies and the Hong Kong skyline fades into black....

Bleaker, darker and more affecting, Wong's follow-up after this year's art house pleaser, Ashes of Time, is an unofficial sequel to his earlier smash ChungKing Express, as evinced by the constant cross references in plot developments, the re-appearance of the Midnight Express Cafe where much of the earlier film took place, and the character of He Zhiwu, this time a petty criminal with the prisoner identification number 223 (223 was He Zhiwu's cop badge number in the first film). Set entirely at night, the film is heavy with an air of melancholy, but retains much of ChungKing's frenetic pace and seething energy. In contrast, the first film dealt with people finding new leases of life, whilst Fallen Angels' five protagonists are all headed for heartbreak and doomed to loneliness - a sort of flip-side to compensate for ChungKing's kookiness and comedy, if you like. But the central theme remains essentially the same: finding oneself in the decaying urban landscape of Hong Kong. Where the four characters in ChungKingwere defined by love, the five in Fallen Angels are defined by misery and broken hearts, and it is this willingness to explore contrasting themes in the framework of a film so similar to another, that makes Wong's film a bold new innovation. Whilst ostensibly a sequel, it nonetheless manages to stand on its own as an independent film - but those familiar with the earlier movie will be able to appreciate the darkness so much better. Wong has worked his concepts into a semblance of a script, once again having his characters speak their thoughts directly to the audience, this time dragging them into the vortex of their painful existence. Filled with witty one-liners and succinct, depressing monologues, the overall sensations created by this heady mix is the incongruous mixture of hopelessness and timorous optimism. Thankfully, Wong had the good sense to tone down the romantic air of this film, giving it a harder, tougher edge. In particular, He Zhiwu's muteness is given a refreshingly inexplicable reason - originally, a broken engagement and a shattered heart were to have driven him to swallow the engagement ring and never speak again; whilst this would have been more romantic and in line with what we have come to expect of Wong, the change is welcome as it makes the film less suffocating, injecting dark humour into the tragic on-goings, mirroring real life so much more convincingly in the process. Also, Wong has abandoned the technique of separating the two stories into two discrete parts, choosing to have them both run concurrently - this works as the two contrasting storylines provide contrasting commentaries on the state of the characters' psyches. Overall, Wong has fashioned yet another artistic and cinematic triumph.

Cinematographer Christopher Doyle here aids Wong by using a new wide angle lens to capture the images. By zooming in tightly, the audience is given larger-than-life, exaggerated and distorted pictures of the actors' faces as Wong coaxes their emotions on-screen. This creates a claustrophobic atmosphere that makes their troubles seem more immediate, more apparent and pressing, and greatly enhances the overall distinctive feel this film possesses. Other than this, Doyle digs into his old bag of tricks: blurring images before a sudden clear close-up, having a rippling effect run across the screen during a static shot, engineering pirouetting down-ward spiral shots etc. Coupled with the use of video quality images and lighting that accentuates the riot of colours onscreen (as opposed to the minimalist, washed-out colourless technique in ChungKing), Doyle continues to surprise Asian audiences with skilful camera-work that surpasses most Western productions.

Again, Frankie Chan and Roel A Garcia's music for the film plays an integral part. This time, alternative rock, Taiwanese pop and a beautifully haunting ballad, "Forget Him", join a hypnotic, trance-like score (complete with whispered mutterings) to accentuate the feel and mood of the film. In particular, the original score, with its very current "trip-hop" feel (a sound popularised by Western artistes like Green Day) here rivals the orchestra pieces in ChungKingin injecting urgency and pulsating energy into the hitman's murderous proceedings onscreen, while the insistent wailings in the background lend an added pathos to the carnage shown.

Special mention should also be made of William Chang Shuping's excellent aesthetic direction of the whole film. From the dinghy and tacky decorations in the apartments, to the wholly unusual costuming of the cast, Chang has matched Wong's vision by giving him an urban landscape filled with litter, decay and heavy with an overbearing air of gloom. He also displays a talent for surprising the audience with outfits that manage to look good in spite of themselves; the piece de resistance in the wardrobe department is the combination of Karen Mok's blonde hair, with a cheap looking gold cheongsam with a black chiffon tank top over it, and a pair of floral boxer shorts under it, completed with tan stockings and stiletto heels - horrifying as it sounds, the outfit actually looks good, and is proof of Chang's unusual talent.

Wong has long been credited with turning hitherto non-actors into competent, even shining, thespians, whilst assisting bona fide actors in winning awards for their efforts in his films. Here, Leon Lai tries to bag himself an award by playing against type as a sullen, sour-faced hitman at odds with himself and his profession. At most a competent actor, Lai made his acting debut as a villainous cad in the TVB television serial, The Foundling's Progress (which propelled Wilson Lam to fame); back then, he gave the best performance of his career since, at once convincing and honest in his portrayal. Since then, Lai has never performed in any capacity beyond the obvious, and sadly, he continues this tradition here. However, he does earn points for daring to mess with his squeaky clean image. Sporting a hairdo from hell (very courageous considering this man made an entire career based on having perfect hair) and wearing threads a Beng would avoid, he is the physical personification of a faux cool guy who just really wants a simple life, but is caught in a dead-end situation. Lai tries hard to portray the angst required, but is not entirely convincing. It is nice to see him play the anti-hero with the minimum standard of realism; if this had been anything but a Wong Kar Wai film, it would have been more than sufficient - but we have come to expect more, and Lai, in the final analysis, does not quite deliver the goods. A good attempt nonetheless.

More promising is Karen Mok, in a role she completed before making The Saviour, where her dyed-blonde locks were shaved. Playing the personification of rejection, her character is a wild card, given to doing unexpected things, having sudden mood swings - much to Mok's credit, what at first seems like irritating overacting takes on many layers right before the audience's eyes as she slowly, through little mannerisms and deft movements of the eyes, reveals more of her character's inner demons that make her sudden outbursts of happiness a truly sad affair to behold. Bruised by rejection, her character's sad attempts to grasp at happiness in the littlest things makes her at once a pathetic, yet resilient, soul. Mok throws herself into the role, immersing herself completely in her character, and it shows onscreen in her showy but affecting performance. Wong reigns her in by filming her sequences in abrupt jump-cuts, fracturing her overpowering style, leaving just the right amount of substance to enhance his film.

Like Leon Lai, former Miss Hong Kong, Michelle Reis, guns for credibility and respect as an actress by working with Wong Kar Wai. Since she started her acting career in I Do, I Do, Reis has proven herself to be a mannequin extraordinare, her inability to act a feat unparalleled even by the likes of Bridget Lin. Often unidimensional, wooden and painful to watch in "good girl" roles, her performances are often met with laughs of derision. Her failure so far may be explained by the fact that Reis has never quite managed to grasp the Cantonese dialect, and thus, her portrayals were utterly useless as she struggled to enunciate her dialogue. Here, under Wong's tutelage, Reis astonishes by blooming into one of the most sultry and affecting femme fatales ever seen in Asian cinema, giving the best performance of her career. Sporting extremely tacky jewellery and wearing a succession of PVC slips, fishnets and skin-tight faux leopard print wraps, Reis impresses with her ability to convey emotions so well when she is not hampered with dialogue she can barely pronounce. Knowing her limitations, Wong has given her precious little to say, but much to do. Reis' every little twitch, alternately sly and vulnerable sideway glances, and her ability to tap into the very core of her character's existence and display this to the audience, proves she can actually act under the right circumstances. Though unlikely to win her any awards as yet, this is a revelatory piece of work from a hitherto hopeless actress who literally chain-smokes her way to stardom here.

But best of all is Takeshi Kaneshiro's turn as the street urchin longing for an end to his loneliness. Having last collaborated with Wong in ChungKing Express, Kaneshiro here gives a sparkling performance to better his last outing as a character named He Zhiwu. This is a complex role which calls for an actor full of charisma and true acting capabilities, and Wong has made a wise casting decision in giving the singer-turned-actor the chance to shine, cementing the promise he showed in the earlier film. As the real central character of the film, Kaneshiro manages to convey much without having to say anything on-camera, using his eyes and hands to draw the audience into his messy little world. Also unafraid of messing with his clean-cut teenybopper image, Kaneshiro appears in a series of very unbecoming hairstyles and outfits which scream "fashion nightmare" and smokes enough cigarettes to take his already low and guttural speaking voice a couple of notches lower. But all his efforts are richly rewarded with a performance that is uniformly excellent, irreverent and a joy to watch; his spontaneity and rakish charm go a long way, together with his expressive eyes, to winning the audience over, and his performance anchors the entire film, grounding it with a potent mix of aimlessness and frustration.

Wong Kar Wai has never made a film that could be called commercially pleasing, and Fallen Angels is more evidence of his uncommon genius. By no means easy to watch, his film is filled with multiple layers of meanings and dense with commentary on life. In this strange, heady concoction of angst, disappointment and sadness, Wong has realised and completed his vision of modern Hong Kong's underbelly, which first began with ChungKing Express. This later film is both a testament of his unwavering visionary talent, and a profoundly disturbing amalgamation of the real-life cries of the dispossessed souls he chronicles so very well.