2046
Entry updated 29 July 2024. Tagged: Film.
Film (2004), a joint Hong Kong, France, Germany, Italy and China production. Jet Tone Productions, Block 2 Pictures, Paradis Films, Orly Films, Classic SRL, Shanghai Film Corporation, Arte France Cinéma, France 3 Cinéma, ZDF-Arte. Written, produced and directed by Wong Kar-wai (1958- ). Cast includes Maggie Cheung, Gong Li, Takuya Kimura, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Wang Sum, Faye Wong and Zhang Ziyi. 129 minutes. Colour.
A follow-up to Wong's Days of Being Wild (1990) and In the Mood for Love (2000), neither of which contains sf elements. 2046 moves between a storyline set in the year of the title, and three present-day stories, all presented non-chronologically. The future sections spring from the writing of the film's narrator, Chow Mo-wan (Leung), who has moved back to Hong Kong from Singapore after the ending of the relationship which formed the focus of In the Mood for Love. In 2046, seemingly the entire Earth is criss-crossed by a colossal train network (see Transportation). The passengers in the film are attempting to reach a room called 2046, where reputedly nothing ever changes, so they can live in the past and forget whatever has caused them to seek the room. The train is also populated by gynoids (see Androids), who will serve the passengers' every desire, but with whom travellers are warned not to fall in love. Only one person has ever returned from 2046, Tak (Kimura) who left when he lost the love of his life there, and who falls in love with one of the fembots on the return journey, even though she/it can never return his feelings. This storyline appears at intervals along the contemporary sequences of Chow's relationships with several women, including encounters in room 2046 of a Hong Kong hotel.
Shot in the ravishingly tactile style that made Wong one of the most celebrated names in world cinema in the 1990s and 2000s, 2046 is the only one of his films to be partly sf, even if those sequences are the product of Chow's imagination. There is clearly no attempt at realistic speculation towards the real 2046. The unironic sexism of the depiction of the female Sex robots sours what is otherwise a beautiful if overlong study of romantic longing, and the perils and attractions of indulging in memories, with a remarkable cast of Hong Kong and China's most bankable actors. The endless rail network is an effective metaphor for the missed chances and unexpected connections that define the characters relationships. In real life, 2046 is also the year that Hong Kong's self-regulation from China ends, giving a piquant edge to the use of that number for people who want to stay stuck in the past. [CWa]
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