2046 [2004]

Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai continued his enthralling tryst with unrequited love and loneliness with 2046. A loose sequel to In the Mood for Love and with passing references to Days of Being Wild, 2046 could easily be one of Wong Kar-Wai’s most challenging projects. The movie has two simultaneous timelines – one in Hong Kong of the late 1960s where a young, struggling author (played with devastating effect by Kar-Wai regular Tony Leung, one of the finest actors of his generation), upon getting rejection in his first (and true) love, has become a severely detached individual and a serial womanizer, and spends the days leading to each year-end with a separate woman; and in 2046, where nothing ever changes and which happens to be principal motif of the author’s stories. Arresting cinematography by long time collaborator Christopher Doyle, exquisite production design, and a lazy yet rapturous narrative, have managed to capture the beauty and sadness lingering in dinghy hotel rooms and narrow staircases, and have helped make this existentialist romantic drama-cum-pseudo sci-fi movie an engaging poem to the lost souls of the world.






Director: Wong Kar-Wai
Genre: Drama/Romance/Existential Drama/Psychological Drama/Sci-Fi
Language: Chinese (Cantonese)
Country: China (Hong Kong)