..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

2046

Directed by Wong Kar Wai
Sony Pictures Classics

IWriter-director Wong Kar-wai has been careful not to call 2046 a sequel to his subversively erotic In the Mood for Love, even though it briefly reunites both its protagonists and the actors who played them (Tony Leung, Maggie Chung). Instead, Wong says in his commentary, he conceived 2046 as an echo to the frustrations and regrets that lingered from their tragically unrequited encounter in a Hong Kong boarding house. The intensity of that near-miss experience, which occurred in Room 2046, prompts the writer, Chow, to conjure a sort of purgatory where former lovers are allowed one last opportunity to work out their regrets and longings. When Chow’s narrative isn’t revealing a neon-tinged future – a noir-Metropolis, with magnificent trains that carry passengers to impossible destinations (one, a station known simply as 2046) -- Wong’s camera returns to mid-century Hong Kong to examine Chow’s recent past. No longer timid and polite, Chow found shelter in another apartment building, where a series of captivating women (Ziyi Zhang, Li Gong) just happened to inhabit Room 2046. Even though the sex in 2046 is less explicit than that in most of PG-13 titles, the electricity generated by Chow’s visits to Room 2046 could light Las Vegas for a week.

- by Gary Dretzka