2046

This sequel to In The Mood For Love is more up my alley. Tony Leung has a bit of a personality transplant and becomes a playboy, gambler and pulp novelist – indulging in all the vices he wouldn't allow himself as a dutiful but unhappily married man. Losing Maggie Cheung will do that to a fellow. Perhaps this past idealised but renounced love affair makes it impossible to commit anymore. Leung becomes even more of an observer, he's more distanced and cold towards the women he gets involved with. That aloofness is matched by Zhang Ziyi, but while the steamy affair she eventually succumbs to leads her to fall in love, Leung pushes her away. In a telling monetary metaphor, he's quite happy to buy affection, but he refuses to sell it.

Leung becomes a viewpoint character in what is a more distended and unfocused film – it's a bit more of a portmanteau like Chunking Express. Like that film, 2046 gives Faye Wong a happy ending running off with a young lover. The most bizarre addition to Wong Kar-Wai's repertoire is how that story filters through to a sci-fi novel Leung is writing, where his own feelings and reminiscences come to the fore. Leung is attracted to Faye, but recognises that it would be wrong to take advantage of this young idealist. Renunciation of love is what anchors Leung's personality – but he's sympathetic enough to give Faye Wong and Zhang Ziyi a way out of Hong Kong and an opportunity for a brighter future abroad.

The film doesn't add up to very much, and it seems to have changed quite a bit over a long period of development. It was originally meant to be shot in Shanghai, and wasn't supposed to be a sequel. The linking technique of a hotel room number was arrived at a bit randomly, and gradually the film started merging with In The Mood For Love. It could have turned into a mess (some might think it is a mess), but somehow in the edit Wong Kar-Wai manages to create a sense of momentum across the disparate plot strands. It might be my favourite thing he's done – Tony Leung has probably never been more handsome and charming, and Zhang Ziyi's passionate performance really gives the film a powerful punch.

Chunking Express

This feels like a minor film compared to In The Mood For Love or Ashes of Time. It's set in the present day, and while Wong Kar-Wai is still obsessed by the lovelorn stoicism of his characters, at least here he gives one budding couple an escape.

It's still a bit of a mess though, and I'm not just talking about the long exposure effect Kar-Wai likes to use for his chase scenes. The film is actually two separate films clumsily jammed together, with a takeaway outlet in Hong Kong's Chungking Mansions serving as the bridge between them. Both don't really have enough to them. They are like short stories – vignettes designed to introduce you to a shared setting. And the first is particularly ludicrous, involving a drug dealer gunning down a bunch of double-crossing Indian migrants.

All the characters in Chunking Express feel one-dimensional, defined by quirks like a fixation on tinned pineapples or the song 'California Dreamin' by The Mamas & the Papas. These serve as obvious symbols for loneliness or wanderlust, and they create recurring patterns which fail to build to anything beyond the sum of the parts.

The plot is as contrived as anything else by Wong Kar-Wai – every one of his films I've seen tries to stretch out the possibility of a connection between lovers past endurance. Depending on your tastes, this might be a good thing or a bad thing. I find it unappealingly manipulative when the achingly cool characters involved are so completely devoid of personality.

Ashes of Time Redux

The template for Hsiao-Hsien's The Assassin, which came out to universal acclaim at the start of this year. Again, the plot is so well known (based on a novel which is like the Chinese The Lord of the Rings) that its explication is felt unnecessary. Again, the martial arts are almost incidental. I think there can only be about 15 minutes of actual fighting in the 90 minute running time. There is ample room for the director's concerns, and flashy style, to predominate.

My sense is that Wong Kar-Wai always ends up preferring to spend his hours examining romantic renunciation. Love in Ashes of Time blooms only in an environment of betrayal. Marriages are cages our heroes yearn to escape from. They never do, which is how Wong builds up the dramatic weight in his films. Instead, we are left holding onto memories – often painful, and constantly fading. That, I assume, is what the film's title refers to.

I'm extrapolating from In The Mood For Love, which I found frustrating. Ashes of Time worked better for me, perhaps because its contrivances are entirely on the surface, and you don't feel like you're being manipulated. The film is elliptical about its plot, but entirely upfront about its themes. The characters tell you, in long soliloquies and monologues.

I guessed that In The Mood For Love left the possibility open for the two suffering lovers to consummate their affair – Maggie Cheung's son being the result. Interestingly, Ashes of Time repeats this motif almost exactly – Cheung (again!) also has a son, whose father may be our protagonist, rather than the man Cheung married. Her reflections as she watches her son out of the window is the most beautiful part of the film (incidentally, it's the only bit shot in a studio).

There is a sense here that a new generation will abandon the stifled, clandestine romantic lives of the past. But Wong appears fixated on them. Happy marriages, like that of the shoeless swordsman, are a joke. They involve compromise. Real love is about not giving in, and being alone – pining nobly for a beloved who is either far away, or dead.

In the Mood for Love

As the previous post attests, I'm a firm believer in the importance of titles, and this one felt like a stinker while I was watching. Wong apparently arrived at it by chance after being dissuaded against Age of Bloom (a song in the film and of the period) and Secrets (which sums up the film's themes). Both are superior choices. A good title is like the cherry on top of the icing of the cake (to borrow a metaphor from conversations with Joel, keeper of the peace at the LGNN). It's a way into and a summation of what the film is all about.

The pop song's reference to blossoms is an evocation of spring, youth and the beautiful. Its deployment is partly ironic, as by the time we meet our central couple they are already trapped in loveless marriages which prevent them from being together. Nonetheless, like the pop music of youth, both look back to this time together as their true first young love.

Secrets is rather bluntly explained by Tony Leung in a bar to his wastrel friend, but that and the callback to it at the end is less interesting than the environment of secrecy that pervades the relationships in the film. Maggie Cheung has to field calls from her employer's wife and mistress. Her husband is having an affair with Leung's wife. Their fine eye for details (the same tie, the same handbag) uncovers the secret. They themselves have to be mindful in case the always present neighbours start asking questions. This is a time where you could still be told off by your landlady if she thinks you're spending too many evenings out when your husband is away.

In a society where infidelity is ever-present but rigorously policed, Leung and Cheung choose the moral high ground, even though they are falling in love. All of which made me want them to throw off the soiled principles they insist on clinging to. In fact, the film leaves that open – and I sometimes like to think that Leung is the father to Cheung's son who is revealed at the end, and that little secret was what ended her marriage. But then why would she want to raise the boy without Leung? I suspect Wong had other intentions – conspiring to separate the couple and end the film on a note of yearning for the love, and the specific time, that had passed.