Swept Away
Give in to the rapture of Wong Kar Wai's stylish, simmering '2046'

The films of Chinese-born, Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai are always worth watching, even when they misfire. His dazzlingly kinetic Chungking Express was about one half masterpiece. In The Mood For Love came drenched in stylish erotic longing, even as it drifted into tedium. In his new film, 2046, Wong is in complete command of style, substance, and story. The movie may hiccup a little at the very end, with two or three too many false endings. But who cares when the rest is such a lush, woozy, and wonderful cinematic ride?

2046 is more than a sequel to In The Mood For Love. It's a far more deeply textured exploration of the earlier film's themes of love, longing, memory, and fate, juiced up with an audacious dual storyline that keeps viewers engrossed. Tony Leung returns as Mr. Chow, a newspaperman and pulp fiction story writer still reeling from his doomed (and never consummated) affair with a married woman (his Mood co-star Maggie Cheung, who appears in flashback).

The story unspools between Hong Kong and Singapore during the years 1963 to 1969, although not necessarily in that order. Against the turbulent backdrop of the '60s, Chow enters into a series of turbulent liaisons with some very different women. In each case, the timing is never quite right for the relationship to turn serious, as wistful rogue Chow is too gallant to pretend love he doesn't feel, or press his love on a woman who can't reciprocate. Chow also moves into a shabby Hong Kong apartment building, drawn by apartment number 2046 (the number of a hotel room he once shared with his former flame); he rents the flat next door with a voyeuristic peephole into 2046—where many of his new romances begin.

Chow and one neighbor, sexual adventuress Bai Ling (Ziyi Zhang), flirt and stalk and tease each other into a steamy affair, but she falls in love with him even though he can't love her back. The ever-luscious Gong Li plays a Singapore gambler known as the Black Spider too haunted by her own past to connect with Chow. The landlord's daughter, Jing Wen (Faye Wong, the Betty Boop cutie from Chungking Express), sneaks into empty room 2046 to practice Japanese for the Japanese lover, Tak (Kimura Takuya) her father forbids her to see. She bonds with Chow—they even write stories together—but her heart belongs to Tak, despite Chow's simmering yearning.

Meanwhile, Chow is spinning a sci-fi story set in the year 2046. (The year Hong Kong will be reintegrated with China, although politics don't interest Wong all that much.) In a time-traveling future, 2046 is where one goes by speeding train to revisit one's memories. "Nothing ever changes there," Chow's narrator tells us, and nobody ever comes back from 2046. Except for the narrator, who, like the gradually evolving Chow, tires of the endless train ride into his aching memories and longs to move on.

The sci-fi story plays in counterpoint to the real-life scenes as Chow's experiences find their way into his fiction. In the most delirious merging of the two, Chow writes a new story for Jing Wen about a Japanese man on the train (Takuya, again) who falls in love with his android cabin attendant (Faye Wong, again, with a chrome earpiece, and armor-faceted bustier), even though it's strictly forbidden. Love is unpredictable with an android who whose reactions—speech, laughter, tears, orgasms—may be delayed by hours by faulty circuitry. As the forbidden lovers keep missing their connections, Chow realizes he's telling Jing Wen his own story.

Director Wong employs three virtuoso cinematographers (Christopher Doyle, Lai Yiu Fai, and Kwan Pun Leung) to convey his rapturous vision of '60s Hong Kong, Singapore, and the dynamic crackling futureworld of 2046. The movie pulses not only with color and exotica (including the big-hair, spiked-heel, Dragon Lady chic of the actresses), but wit, poetry, and sultry eroticism as well. Wong isn't just throwing frenzied movement up onscreen to get your attention; every frame, every image has dramatic and emotional weight in the composition of a master cinema craftsman. Too long? You bet, but you still might wish it would go on forever.

2046 With Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Gong Li, Faye Wong, and Ziyi Zhang. Written and directed by Wong Kar Wai. A Sony Classics release. Rated R. 129 minutes. In Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese with English subtitles. (****)
Review published in Good Times, Sept. 8, 2005