2046, 2004
In
an early episode in 2046, Chow Mo-wan
(Tony Leung) - the international correspondent and aspiring wuxia novelist
of Wong's preceding film, In the Mood for
Love (and now a struggling journalist
and pulp writer of erotic serials) encounters a former acquaintance from
Singapore named Lulu (Carina Lau) at a seedy nightclub on Christmas Eve, 1964.
Now preferring to be called Mimi, she seems indifferent to their reunion,
unable to recall any of Mo-wan's referential anecdotes until he notes that
their brief moment of connection occurred over the memory of her former lover,
a Chinese Filipino who had died young, and from whose death she has never
emotionally recovered. It is a momentary reference to the ill-fated love affair
between Mimi (also played by Lau) and Yuddy (Leslie Cheung) in Wong's second
feature, Days
of Being Wild (in which Leung briefly - and inexplicably - appears in
an unexplored vignette). Escorting the visibly shattered Lulu home, Mo-wan
discovers that her apartment coincidentally bears the fateful number 2046
- the hotel room of Mo-wan and Su-Lizhen's (Maggie Cheung) encounter in In
the Mood for Love - an unresolved memory that inspires him to take up residence
in the neighboring room at the hotel and begin working on a time travel science
fiction novel set in the year 2046, a destination where lost memories are
recaptured and relived in perpetuity, but from which there seems no escape
(an idea that similarly resonates through Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris and
Alain Resnais'
Je t'aime je t'aime).
Deriving inspiration from an eclectic assortment of characters whose paths
he has momentarily crossed, including his landlord Mr. Wang (Wang Sum), Wang's
eldest daughter Jing Wen (Faye Wong), Jing-Wen's Japanese boyfriend Tak (Takuya
Kimura), an attractive hostess named Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi), and an enigmatic
professional gambler named Su-Lizhen (Li Gong), Mo-wan's novel inevitably
betrays his own sentimental inertia, articulating a haunted and bittersweet
chronicle of missed opportunity and unrequited desire.
In the essay Images from the Inside, Jean-Marc
Lalanne describes the films of Wong Kar-wai as akin to the elaborately conceived
and painstaking detailed, but consequently unwieldy and disintegrating fragments
of the cartographer's map in a José Luis Borges novel: a simulacrum
whose fidelity approached the real so exactly that it now covered the original
subject in its entirely. Within this allegorical framework, 2046 perhaps comes
closest to Wong's overarching raison d'être for his evocatively fractured,
yet voluptuous and lucid contemporary portraits of transitory connection,
rootlessness, and unreconciled longing. From Lau's reprised appearance as
Mimi to repeated mnemonics of the number 2046, to the film's elliptical structure
that modulates sinuously through past, present, and (fictional) future, to
the film's thematic narrative progression through successive Christmas Eves
(a holiday that evokes images of birth, hope, and renewal), Wong captures
the delusion and innate tragedy in the perpetuation of emotional stasis, insularity,
and existential transience that lead to meaningless ritual (note that the
year 2046 also signifies the end of the Chinese government's reassurance to leave
Hong Kong's political and economic administration unchanged for 50 years after
the British handover in 1997). Moreover, through Mo-wan's futuristic companion
manuscript 2047, a story that he had penned about a Japanese traveler who
sought to leave 2046 (a figurative utopian escape that seemed logically inconceivable
and had never been undertaken) and his relationship with a malfunctioning
android/train stewardess afflicted with delayed reaction (a character based
on his assistant and occasional ghostwriter Jing Wen), Wong illustrates the
desolation of failed synchronicity: the reluctant realization that romantic
destiny is defined by the precise, coincidental intersection of both a physical
and an emotional trajectory. It is interesting to note that the film's surreal
opening sequence (of the lone Japanese traveler) is later revealed, not to
be an excerpt from the serial novel 2046, but from the draft of 2047: a point
of view that acknowledges the folly of resigned nostalgia and seeks to escape
its moribund, seductive euphoria and blissful oblivion. It is this defiance
against complacency and delusive escapism that invariably define Wong's indelible
images of eternal romanticism as well: an ambitious and ennobled personal
quest to resolve time, desire, connection, and destiny within the chaotic
and unpredictable tide of inevitable human history.
© Acquarello 2004. All rights reserved.
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The
film opens to a symbolic shot of Wah lying obscured beneath a blanket
that is half cast in shadow on a sunny late spring
afternoon as he is rudely awakened by the repeated telephone calls
of a persistent, overly familiar aunt. Explaining that a distant cousin
named Ah-Ngor (Maggie Cheung) has gone to the city for medical treatment
related to a respiratory infection, the aunt catches the drowsy and
unfocused Wah off-guard by proposing a presumptuous request for him
to accommodate the young woman during her extended stay in town. The
imposed arrangement immediately proves inconvenient as inferences of
Wah's association with organized crime surface when his bombastic but
inutile protégé Fly (Jacky Cheung) calls to provide periodic
status on a stalled and protracted attempt to collect an outstanding
debt from a resistant and confrontational thug. Unable to carry out
his assigned tasks and often inciting trouble with his arrogant bravado,
Fly has proven himself to be a liability and embarrassment to the local
mob boss who repeatedly advises Wah to redirect his volatile protégé towards
a more mundane vocation. Wah attempts to insulate his cousin from his
disreputable affairs during her visit but is unavoidably implicated
when Fly and his brother Ah-Site (Ronald Wong) stagger into Wah's
apartment to seek assistance for injuries sustained during an instigated
pool hall brawl. Inevitably, Ah-Ngor returns to the normalcy of her
bucolic life in the province, and soon, Wah begins to reassess his
life, fueled in part by a chance encounter with a former girlfriend
who has since married, and the looming threat of a police crackdown
after a high-ranking mob informant is arrested.
A
handsome young man named Yuddy (Leslie Cheung) stops by a stadium
concession stand to buy a soft drink. He approaches the shy, beautiful
store attendant and catches her attention by correctly guessing her
name as Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung), and confidently predicts that she
will see him in her dreams. One afternoon, he asks her to look at
his wristwatch, and after a minute passes, explains that he will always
remember the time - one minute before 3:00 PM on April 16, 1960 -
because of their shared moment together. The romantic declaration
intrigues Su Lizhen, and she gradually falls in love with him. However,
Yuddy's inability to commit to a relationship frustrates Su Lizhen,
and, after he rejects her marriage proposal, she reluctantly leaves
him. Soon, Yuddy meets a sensual, uninhibited entertainer using the
stage name, Mimi (Carina Lau), who, in turn, attracts the attention
of Yuddy's childhood friend, Zeb (Jacky Cheung). One evening, a kind,
well-intentioned police officer (Andy Lau) escorts Su Lizhen back
to Yuddy's apartment in order to retrieve her belongings. Su Lizhen,
caught off guard by Mimi's presence and shattered by Yuddy's callousness,
confesses her overwhelming grief to the attentive officer. After taking
a long walk together, the officer leaves an open invitation for Su
Lizhen to call him at a telephone booth on his patrol watch. Every
evening, he momentarily pauses in front of the telephone booth, waiting
for a call that never comes. And so the pattern of encounters and
missed opportunities emerges in 
There
is a recurrent sound of a sensual waltz that accompanies each encounter
between Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) as
they invariably cross paths in a crowded residential complex: the
first is a polite glance as Mo-Wan leaves the room of a friendly
card game; and then during the subsequent encounters on the steps
of a noodle shop, where, often denied dinner companionship by
their spouses, they stop for a quick meal. One evening, Mo-Wan
asks to meet Su Li-zhen in a restaurant, admires her purse,
and asks where he could buy one as a present to his wife. She
explains that it is a gift from her husband that was purchased
during a recent international business trip, and is not locally
available. Su Li-zhen, in turn, asks Mo-Wan about his tie, and
he responds that it is a gift from his wife. The subtle,
underplayed moment is a knowing confirmation of their own
nagging suspicions about their spouses' infidelity. The two
begin to rehearse scenarios in order to prepare themselves
for the seemingly inevitable emotional confrontation: who
initiated the affair; how to broach the subject of infidelity;
how to react after the shattering admission. When Mo-Wan decides
to pursue a lifelong dream of writing a martial arts serial in
order to pass the time, Su Li-zhen agrees to proofread his work.
However, when their professional collaboration leads to an
undeniable attraction, the two find themselves struggling
with the shame and guilt over their own emotional betrayal.