2046

We can recognise the hand of the master in Wong Kar-wai’s appealing style. His long-awaited new work 2046 (the film took nearly five years to produce and went back to the cutting table even after the belated première in Cannes) is also made in that style, together with the characteristic melancholy, romantic and eclectic choice of music. 2046 has many similarities with its predecessor In the Mood for Love, but is more a variation on a theme than a sequel. 2046 makes leaps in time between present, past and future. The story is about memories of lost loves. Memories that fill the head of one man, a virtuoso role by Tony Leung. This Chow Mo-wan (the same name as the man in In the Mood for Love) is a writer who has affairs with different women (played by Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi, among others). The women always stay in hotel room 2046; he has the room next door. In the novel he is writing, a train leaves at irregular intervals to the year 2046. All the passengers have the same aim: to rediscover lost memories, because nothing will have changed by 2046. The writer would appear to be stuck in his past, when he had an impossible love affair with Li-chun. His affairs are a desperate attempt to forget her, or to rediscover her – even the woman in his novel is like her. A penetrating visualisation of desire and of the inability to surrender oneself completely. (SdH)