Twitch

In The Mood For Love closes with Tony Leung’s Chow Mo-Wan and Maggie Cheung’s Su Li-zhen Chan having gone their separate ways, their sense of propriety and correct behavior having won out over the love they clearly felt for each other. Su Li-zhen remains in Beijing to raise the child Chow will never know he has while Chow moves on to Singapore to make his living as a journalist and occasional novelist. 2046 picks up the thread of Chow’s life some years after this, when he moves to Hong Kong.

Chow has clearly never gotten over his relationship with Su Li-zhen and has been reduced to an emotional shell. Though he continues his work as a writer it is done by rote, without any sense of passion or urgency. He has become a dissolute playboy, moving from woman to woman steadfastly refusing to have a relationship of any depth or permanence with any of them. While in Hong Kong he takes up residence in a small hotel, living in room 2047 after learning that room 2046 – the number of a room he shared briefly with Su Li-zhen – is not available. The only passion he shows for anything is directed to an ongoing story he is writing – a science fiction tale named 2046 after both the year it occurs and a fictional place where people go to recapture lost memories. Bits of the sci-fi tale are intercut with the late 60’s action of Chow’s actual life and it is quickly made clear that the story serves as his venting point, the place he allows all of his buried feelings to bubble out. With this basic framework in place the film takes us through three of Chow’s relationships: one with a professional gambler played by Gong Li; one with his neighbor, a nightclub performer / call girl played by Zhang Ziyi; one with his landlord’s daughter (Faye Wong), an aspiring writer hopelessly in love with a Japanese man who she has been forbidden to have contact with.

The expectations placed on this film were simply enormous and so it was no surprise when it generated strongly mixed responses. The film has both its strengths and weaknesses, the strengths largely taken for granted and the weaknesses greatly magnified thanks purely to its position as a sequel to In the Mood For Love. Let’s start with the weaknesses.

2046 lacks some of the emotional punch of In The Mood For Love. That film ran three emotional arcs simultaneously: the shock of betrayal by their respective spouses, the slow development of their own romantic relationship, and the social tensions pulling against their ever consummating their blossoming relationship. That trifecta gave ITMFL an emotional depth and resonance rarely found in film. Chow’s story in 2046 is relatively slight by comparison: he is simply all busted up inside and trying to come to grips with his sense of loss. It’s still a potent force to drive the character but the sole focus simply lacks the drive of the earlier work. Chow’s degeneration, while a very legitimate and emotionally true path to put him on, also makes him a considerably less sympathetic character in this film than he was in its predecessor which is a significant problem considering he’s in virtually every scene.

A more serious problem is WKW’s seeming abandonment of the sense of subtlety he has built his name on. A major strength of his films is what he doesn’t show you, what he doesn’t tell, what he lets you work out for yourself. That approach is largely abandoned here as he opts for exposition, lots of it, and mostly packaged as largely unnecessary voice-overs by Chow. It’s almost as though Chow has become afraid of silence and fills the need to fill it with the sound of his own voice, regularly feeding us information that is already perfectly obvious from the characters’ behavior on screen, or that could have been more effectively – and less obtrusively – worked into the script as brief snippets of dialog. There are moments of the film that feel positively heavy handed and that is something I never thought I would say about a Wong Kar Wai film.

What does it do well? Again, two things leap to the forefront.

I have no idea if this has received any North American screenings to qualify for the Oscars, but if it has it should be an absolute lock to win the Best Cinematography statue. There is no question whatsoever that this is the best work of Christopher Doyle’s stellar career. Every shot – every single one – is absolutely flawless. Wong Kar Wai takes a lot of heat for how long he takes to shoot his films but there’s no denying that he uses that time to generate some jaw-dropping imagery. The warm tones that marked In The Mood For Love are again on full display here, this time juxtaposed with a fascinating future world – a future imagine through a late sixties sensibility. You could take absolutely any frame from this film and hang it as a work of art. It’s just gorgeous, gorgeous stuff.

The second positive, of course, are the actors’ performances. Wong Kar Wai has a dazzling all star cast here and they all do well, particularly Zhang Ziyi and Faye Wong. Some big name stars such as Chang Chen and Carina Lau also put in appearances in secondary roles and they shine there, as well. Don’t be fooled by the ‘Special Appearance’ listed for Maggie Cheung, though, as she’s in the film for only one shot.

This is a film that absolutely screams to be seen on the big screen – I plan on seeing it in the theaters as soon as it gets a domestic release – but it is worth noting that Mei Ah has done a stellar job with the DVD release. The film has a beautiful, clean transfer with deep, natural blacks and sharp contrasts and though it doesn’t have a DTS soundtrack the Dolby 5.1 does just fine. The Englsih subtitles have the occasional lapse in grammar or spelling but are perfectly clear. The two disc set has the added advantage of a subtitled ‘Making Of’ feature on the second disc.