2046 (2004)

Directed by Wong Kar-wai. Starring Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, Faye Wong, Wang Sum, Takuya Kimura, Maggie Cheung, Carina Lau, Chang Chen, Dong Jie, Siu Ping-lam. [R]

Holed up in a hotel room, Leung’s 1960s science fiction writer finds his work and his experiences elliptically merging (or are they feeding off each other?) in relation to encounters and affairs with the various occupants of the room next door, numbered 2046, which is also the year in which his futuristic novel is set. A lovely sketchbook of a movie begging for more definition and clarity; the moods, images, characters, snatches of trite dialogue, and hazy incidents all float through a baroque miasma, and if the film was intended to suggest that memories, regrets, and longings are too abstract and misunderstood to be spelled out in traditional narrative terms, it may even be described as successful. But its push-and-pull between life and art, its muddled connections to writer/director Wong Kar-wai’s earlier In the Mood for Love (and possibly Days of Being Wild), its coldly passionate and generally unlikable characters, its functional repetition, and its confusing chronology and setting changes all appear to demand more than the experience ultimately rewards—the richest of those rewards, after all, rest on those electric-yet-luxuriant surface pleasures. Has its share of ardent admirers, however; ones, no doubt, more easily spellbound by the filmmaker’s low-energy evocations. Luminous Zhang comes closest to creating a striking character worth caring about and remembering.

60/100