Opening 13 Jan 2005
Directed by:
Kar Wai Wong
Writing credits:
Kar Wai Wong
Principal actors:
Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Li Gong, Takuya Kimura, Faye Wong, Ziyi Zhang
If you have a sneaker for melancholy tales and incredibly beautiful women in exquisite clothes, this is your film. Wong Kar Wai, the director of the moving In the Mood for Love has brought six of China’s most breathtaking actresses together including Gong Li of The Red Lantern and Zhang Ziyi, the young star of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The elegant, original clothes are an extraordinary blend of Chinese and Western fashion and are so lovely and so unusual that they are almost a distraction.
The story has a simple outline: a writer, Chow (Tony Leung, lead actor of In the Mood for Love) sits in a hotel room in Hong Kong in 1966 writing a science-fiction book about love in 2047. As Chow writes of the love story of the future, he recalls his past loves. Both the past and the future seem to come together, but it is not difficult to follow the plot. 2046 is the hotel room where much of the action took place in Chow’s past. The love scenes are eroticism of the mind barely played out on screen; the deep longing and in one case, unrequited passion, are wrapped in sadness and the regrets leave a bitter taste. It is a beautiful film. (Adele Riepe)
