In the mode for love

By Noel Vera

Critics seem to feel that Wong Kar Wai's latest film "2046" (2004)
is inferior to his previous "In the Mood for Love," made four years
earlier; that the former--endlessly tinkered with to the point that
it was seriously late for its screening in Cannes--is essentially an
amorphous, unfinished work that needs both serious tightening-up and
developing. I feel differently; taken together, the two films seem
to be stronger than if taken separately.

It's about Mr. Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), a writer in
the '60s living in a Hong Kong hotel, making love to a passing
parade of impossibly beautiful women (Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, Faye
Wong, among others), obsessing about a neighboring hotel room with
the number 2046 nailed to its door, and writing about a superfast
train traveling in time to the year--you guessed it--2046.

It's a strange film, and stranger still is that many of the
complaints critics leveled against "2046" I thought applied as well
if not better to "Mood:" an emphasis on texture and atmosphere over
actual plot, a dwelling on pose and beauty instead of honest
characterization. But while "Mood" showed us (skip the rest of this
paragraph if you haven't seen that film) a near-affair that was
never consummated (I know, I know, the question isn't definitively
answered, but for me it is--they couldn't have had sex,
otherwise "Mood" would have no point, no real source of frustration
or anguish), it never showed us the consequences: Maggie Cheung's Su
Li and Tony Leung's Mr. Chow look longingly at each other before
parting, but that's about it. Wong lets the film speak out loud on
their passion in their stead, through the use of seductive camera
movements and ravishingly bright colors (thanks to Christopher Doyle
and Mark Lee Ping-bin, who often shoots for Hou Hsiao Hsien).

With "2046," the seductive moves and ravishing colors are gone (and
somewhat missed); instead, we return to Doyle's traditional handheld
camerawork (an identifying quality of almost all of Wong's previous
pictures), recording not the emotional stasis of the previous film,
but frenetic, purposeless activity covering up the hollowness
within. Chow's encounter with Su Li has in effect transformed Chow
into a heartless womanizer, and all other women suffer as a result.
The two lovers' story in "Mood" becomes moving in the context
of "2046:" you can measure the depth of Chow's heartbreak by the
number of hearts he breaks in response. It's like the line of
corpses King Kong leaves in his wake, searching for his true love--
the monster's passion is can be seen from the range and level of
destruction he wreaks upon the city.

Some reservations: I'd have preferred the segments set in Chow's
science-fiction story to reflect the style of future actually
proposed back in the '60s (visions of the future are more rooted in
the period they were conceived than in any real future) instead of
what looks like a low-budget version of a Japanese electronic
appliance commercial, complete with (admittedly beautifully lit)
Power Ranger costumes. And I thought showing us the source of Chow's
misogyny--his 'original trauma' in effect--in "2046" is a
mistake: "Mood" is so clearly Chow's backstory that the differences
in details seem jarring; worse, they seem like a waste of screen
time, a re-treading of old ground (Wong seems to have included the
sequence because he wasn't confident viewers will have seen "Mood"
first). Leaving it out would have either tightened the film or left
room for yet another erotic episode (Michelle Yeoh, perhaps?); it
would have also emphasized the film's dependence on the earlier work
in completing its narrative structure, a conceit I would think Wong
wouldn't mind using (of contemporary filmmakers, he seems one of the
most carefree, one of the most eager to tinker around with narrative
structure).

(The train in Chow's science-fiction story, incidentally, the one
which travels to the year 2046 where nothing changes, lost memories
are found, and no one ever leaves, reminds me of a similar train in
J.G. Ballard's short story "Billennium"--coincidence, or does Wong
read Ballard?)

"2046" doesn't exactly do miracles; it doesn't convert me into a
rabid Wong fan (my favorite remains "Happy Together" (1997), where
the heartbreak I felt was truly heartbreaking), but in
following "Mood" with this picture Wong fits missing pieces into
place, allows the overall structure to emerge for a clearer view,
and causes both films to be (to my eyes, anyway) redeemed. So it may
all be worth it, after all.

(First published in High Life Magazine, January 2006)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)