2046
A mysterious and nostalgic film about a writer who is working on a science fiction novel in a Hong Kong hotel and who tries to forget his great love with short affairs.
In Wong’s future-set 2046, the titular number is many things at once – the year when mainland China assumes absolute control of Hong Kong, the number of the hotel room across from that of Mr. Chow, inhabited by a parade of women he pursues and abandons, and the name of the mysterious place where disappointed lovers escape to in Chow’s erotic science-fiction novel.
Wong’s concentration and control – of the Cinemascope frame, light, colour, and the most minute gestures – are at their most accomplished in a work enamoured of the limitless expanse of memory and imagination, where reality and fiction dissolve into regret and yearning.