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The film is another product from the triangulation of Wong Kar-wai (Dir), Christopher Doyle (cinematographer) and Arthur Cheung (art director) and is a de facto sequel of "In the Mood for Love" (2000). It comes with a diegesis that embraces 4 intermingled spatial and temporal dimensions:

(1) Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung)'s love affairs with 2 women, Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi) and Wang Jingwen (Faye Wong) between 1966 and 1968 in Hong Kong;
(2) his past affairs with Su Lizhen (Gong Li) in flashback (1963);
(3) the love affairs between the characters, a Japanese man (Takuya Kimura) and a female robot (Faye Wong), in year 2046 in his futuristic novel "2047" (the futuristic novel in fact is a capture of the past of Chow and his women); and
(4) his intrinsic memories of the previous Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung), aka Mrs. Chan in "In the Mood for Love".

This product pursues the same themes of Wong's previous films: nostalgia, melancholy, mobility, homelessness, poignancy of separation, fruitlessness, vanity, deadlines and the kindred. The plot under the occasional use of flashback (1) depicts Chow's entanglements with 4 women between 1963 and 1968; (2) visualizes his novel "2047" as he projects himself as a Japanese man who unilaterally wants to fall in love with a female robot (Faye Wong) in his novel (this in fact being a projection of his lust of falling in love with Wang Jingwen (also Faye Wong) in the 1967-1968 temporal representation; and (3) externalizes his intrinsic memories about the first Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung). The last is merely shown in 2 separate shots of short take: one of Chow and Su in a taxi in a black and white scene, and the other of Su smoking under a still posing in a room.

The narrative system is unrestricted but non-linear and non-chronological under discontinuous editing which is an obtrusive feature of Wong's movies. In terms of narrative logic, the concentrated preliminary expository sequence showing the characters onboard Train 2046 does not orientate the viewer on the actual time and spatial representation of the entire story but merely brings a silhouette of event definition and their causality in Chow's novel "2047" to the viewer instead. Only when the opening sequence is cut to another sequence of Chow in a completely different costume and setting with Chow's voiceover (introducing his whereabouts) then the spectator realizes that the true time and spatial orientation of the entire story is not the future (year 2046) but year 1966 instead. As Chow returns to Hong Kong in 1966 and he writes the novel in about 1967-1968, Wong, having put the novel sequence before the sequence of Chow's returning to Hong Kong, exercises discontinuous editing to reshuffle the sequences' order to spark off the audience's brain activity of hypothesis formulation right at the beginning of the film (not surprising as he did this in his previous films). This is precedence of eventuality before occurrence of events is a repetition (though varied) of the beginning sequence of "Days of Being Wild" (1994).

The depth of information dissemination is subjective as it is from Chow's perspective. The degree of subjectivity is further reinforced by: (1) the use of Chow's voiceover in a first person position (the voiceover primarily functions to expound events, their causality and advance story progression by economising screen time); (2) the visualization of his novel capturing his memories; (3) the externalization of his memories on the first Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung); and (4) the duplicitous narrative of Chow's peeping of the women in Room 2046.

Story causality gives way to discontinuous decoupage at the beginning but is gradually strengthened in the middle sequence when continuous editing reigns. There are intensive repetitions of story locales (i.e., the hotel and Chow's office). The story progression is slow with the most detailed story line falling on Chow, Bai Ling and Wang Jingwen. The affairs between Chow and Bai Ling share the longest screen time. The plot on their entanglement depicts their evolutionary relations from Bai's affront to Chow to her deep congenial involvement with him. The relations are bi-directional. Their flagrancy is later contrasted with the unilateral relation between Chow and Wang in the imagery of the novel's characters, the Japanese man (a personal projection of Chow himself) and the female robot (a projection of Wang who is apathetic to Chow).

The movie embodies a deluge of virtuosic visual and acoustic aesthetics, although many of them were used in Wong's previous products: shallow focus, asymmetrical framing (predominant throughout the film), parallelism (narrative and visual), reflection of mirror image, oblique framing, shooting of blurred foreground objects to create 3 distinguished planes (i.e., foreground, middle ground and background) in mise-en-scene, intensive use of title cards for narration, wipe-out, montage sequences (this time using flashing light as the cue for the passage of time), slow motion, variation of film speed (multiple exposures) for foreground and background subjects (notably used in "Chungking Express" (1994)), freeze frame, B/W scenes, slit-staging (characters stage in narrow space), visual and musical motifs, off-screen vocals, complete sound-off and diegetic music. A cinematographic property that is not common in Wong's previous products is the crossing of the 180 degree axis of action in 2 shot/reverse shots (conversation between Chow and Lulu (Carina Lau) in an early sequence).

Recurrent motifs are fully exploited in the film. Wong deliberately adopts intertextual motifs which are present in his previous masterpieces: (1) the number "2046" is the room number used in "In the Mood for Love"; (2) the label "legless bird" originates from "Days of Being Wild"; and (3) the name "Su Lizhen" also comes from a character in "Days of Being Wild".

Not surprisingly, the film is also featured by Wong's own nostalgia for numbers and deadlines (i.e., Takuya Kimura's counting 996… 997 in the beginning sequence; the numbers 2046 (year and train identification), 2047 (year), 1224 & 1225 (dates representing X'mas' eve and the X'mas day)).

Other than re-captivating Chow's memories, the futuristic orientation of the novel has a subsidiary function in serving to bring the spectator some freshness by using a contrast in costumes, setting and staging (robotic movement), which are perhaps the only innovation in the film. Chow's rear nudity in a snap shot in a sex sequence is shown in a covert way. A number of soft melodic music is played: "Adaigo", "Christmas Song", "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" and an old Chinese theme "Yuer Wan Wan Zhao Jiu Zhou". The main theme music is played in 2 versions: rumba and repercussion. Wong also uses musical motifs in associating different music with the female characters.

Wong also adopts a contrast in narrative by building an opening with a sharp clash of colours (champagne and blue) in Train 2046 in his novel "2047" and bringing to the epilogue the languid Chow in a taxi in a B/W shot in reality, connoting his failure to cast off his self-restrictions in pursuing "change".

The film is a kaleidoscopic fabrication and variant repetition of the auteur's narrative, thematic and filmic elements in his precedent cinema. The film is Wong's least innovative product in story line, narrative structure and aesthetics which appear to have been moulded to form a stereotype from its predecessor without enhancing Wong's artifice of innovativeness. Wong's esoteric fanatics who search for innovative stuffs from him may be disappointed this time but those who admire the pure exhibits of filmic aesthetics and those deriving utilities from the brain working process will find the film worth the money and the 124 minute screen time.

註：本評論純屬影評作者個人意見，並不代表本網立場。
Note: This views presented in this review is solely the views of the critic who wrote it and do not represent the stance of our website.

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