2046 - Palm Beach Post movie review

'2046' is a good year

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

If you are in the mood for love, or if you are familiar with Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai's acclaimed 2000 release In The Mood for Love, you should be drawn to the exquisitely photographed, serpentine sequel of sorts, 2046. There are rewards to be had in this challenging multi-level tale of sequential relationships, but only for those willing to pay attention and follow its time-jumping journey.

Sony Pictures Classics

'2046'

B+

The verdict: A dream-like series of romantic encounters, stronger on visuals than narrative coherence.

Director: Wong Kar-Wai
Starring: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Gong Li, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Ziyi Zhang, Takuya Kimura
Run time: 129 minutes
Release date: August 5, 2005
Rating: R for sexual content.
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Four years in production and much revised since its premiere at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, 2046 is as much a mood piece as anything else. Still, there is nothing haphazard here in a movie that is meticulously made, even when it flirts with obscurity.

As the title suggests, at least part of the film is futuristic, as a newspaperman named Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai, reprising his character from In The Mood For Love) also pens science fiction — including a short story titled 2046 — about a far-off time where people go to retrieve lost memories and seldom return.

Chow exists in the 1960s, in a series of romantic encounters on successive Christmas Eves. 2046 is also the hotel room number where he has his sexual assignations, as well as the year that China completes its political takeover of Hong Kong.

In the decrepit Oriental Hotel, Chow reunites with Lulu (Carina Lau Ka-ling), an old girlfriend who says she does not recall him before mysteriously disappearing. So he moves into the room next door and gets involved with other women, most notably a prostitute named Bai Ling (Ziyi Zhang of House of Flying Daggers). In a more fatherly way, he takes up with the innkeeper's daughter (Faye Wong), an avid reader of martial arts novels who becomes Chow's stenographer, scribbling down the pulpy prose he dictates to her.

While romance is always in the air, 2046 is more about the dissolution of relationships and melancholy over loss. Wong is more interested in mood and visual panache than he is in narrative coherence. That is not a criticism so much as a warning to those who prefer films that move linearly and arrive at a definite destination.

If 2046 is a mosaic that does not adhere to the usual rules of making connections, as least all the individual pieces are sumptuous to behold. Wong, and his team of cinematographers (Christopher Doyle, Pung-Leung Kwan, Yiu-Fai Lai), use color in bold, sensuous strokes, focusing on tiny details that eventually have a potent cumulative effect. Everything is deliberate, including the music choices — from Asian themes to period standards like Nat King Cole's smoky rendition of The Christmas Song.

Leung is the quintessential Wong actor, working within a narrow emotional range, yet allowing us to get caught up in his romantic entanglements. Sporting a seedy narrow mustache and slicked-back hair, he has grown with the character of Chow and now wears it with the comfort of a well-tailored Hong Kong suit. The women in the film should be familiar to those with a working knowledge of Chinese films of the past decade. Although they are all first-rate, it is Zhang who leaves the most indelible impression.

Chances are 2046 is a film that improves with repeat viewings, revealing more of its layers as you keep watching. But even at a single sitting, the movie leaves memorable images and emotions that linger long after the screen fades to black.