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Whenever someone asked why I left 2046, I always gave them some vague answer. It was easier.

So began 2046, the new film written and directed by Kar Wai Wong. It continually amazes me when I watch a subtitled film, particularly at the cinema, how quickly you begin to ‘hear’ the actors saying the words in English. Films that draw you in, like 2046, with it complex, interwoven relationships between reality and the text the main character writes, quickly become as easy to follow (in the dialog sense, not necessarily the plot sense!) as a film in your native language. And 2046 was certainly a film that you had to work to follow. Beginning in (what we later find to be) the fictional world (/place/time?) of 2046, we see a Japanese man, on a train, counting incessantly. This quickly returns to when Chow, the main character and journalist/writer, was preparing to leave Singapore. The bulk of the story takes place in the hotel in Hong Kong where Chow lives throughout the second half of the 1960s. The film focusses on his relationships with several women. The first woman we learn about is LuLu, also known as Mimi, a girl he knew in Singapore, who has apparently forgotten him. After she is murdered, he wants to move into her room, 2046, in a (small?) hotel; but it is unavailable, and he moves into 2047 instead. He comes to like that room, and stays there, and has relationships with Bai, and Wang Jing Wen, the eldest daughter of the hotelier. I won’t say any more about the plot, other than it’s worth it.

Do you know what people did in the old days when the had a secret? The used to climb a mountain, find a tree, and cut a hole in it. They, they would whisper their secret into the hole, and fill it with mud. That way, no-one would ever find out their secret.

Films like this are thought provoking. When you walk out of the cinema wanting to talk about the film, and what it’s really about, you know the little over 2 hours you spent there was worth it. Jaq was of the opinion that the film is about unrequited love: loving what you can’t have. Jing Wen loves Tak, but is not allowed by her father to be with him; Chow loves Jing Wen, but she does not love him, she only loves Tak; Bai loves Chow, who does not love her. Do people love one another more if they are not loved back?

(Bai) - Can I borrow you tonight? (Chow) - I promised myself there was one thing I would never lend someone else.

What is it that Chow has vowed never to lend? He doesn’t say, and that to me is the key to films like this. I interpreted it that Chow never wanted to lend someone “false hope”; Jaq interpreted it that we would never lend his love. Leaving something to the imagination, while still providing a framework to make an interpolation means that people take from a film according to what they put in, and are capable of thinking. All of the women in 2046 are stunning beauties. When some of them ‘become’ androids, apparently they are airbrushed: I didn’t notice. The (near) flawlessness of their faces (and bottoms, which get quite a lot of screen time) mean that they could be inhuman. Apparently, each of the actors only speaks in their language, yet they all understand one another. I did notice there were several languages (Chinese, apparently both Cantonese and Mandarin, Japanese, and Cambodian - or something else), but I think that only adds depth and magic to the film. I didn’t realise until reading another review (post-watching) that some of the characters (Chow, and Su Lizhen #1) are in his previous film, In the Mood for Love. That might be next on the DVD list. Verdict: I love it.