Wow! Such a good movie.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

"In the Mood for Love" showcased a hopeless love story, that which is lost even before its inception. "2046" portrays the hopeless attempts to overcome the repression of emotions by the repression of identity. Chow's idealized love for Su, which he lost, lead him into a state in which he can't stay true to his emotions. So he moves on without looking back only to look back at those who reminds him of his lost love, which ultimately leads to the realization that he needs to let go of the past. Chow's thoughts are further explored in the sci-fi world of his novel "2046". As each of the characters in his life is portrayed as a character in the novel, his real emotions towards them are exposed, as the writing progresses, even to him.Yearning for love is a basic human emotion that has always been a consistent theme in Wong films. Even when doing action/biography films like "The Grandmaster", the film ends up more or less about love. "2046" portrays the chaos of lost souls who are looking for love from all the wrong places and their suffering when they can't let go of the love they found or get hold of. Like every Wong film, "2046" is also at its best when the visual and musical motifs lead the viewers to feel what the characters are going through.Read full review at www.asianfilmvault.com/2017/07/2046-2004-by- wong-kar-wai.html

Watching 2046 I now understand why I couldn't like In the Mood for Love. At first I thought it had something to do with WKW growing up, merely spectating in painterly detail what he used to rigorously throw himself at. I realize now I didn't like it because it's only the first part of Vertigo, where Judy is not yet Madeleine, a film in desperate search for its doppelganger by and to which it will become the mirror. It's the process by which a soul is clogged and haunted, 2046 on the other hand is the transcedental meditation, thoughts past and present coming and vanishing again until there is peace and the mind is empty. By the end of 2046 Tony Leung is no longer in the mood for love, he's ready for it and it'll never be too early or too late again.A friend whose taste I trust told me she didn't like 2046 because it was too vulgar, and there's a time when 2046 maybe is vulgar. There's a time in the film when Tony Leung is a prick. I thought we were seeing a Mr. Chow in name only, a sequel in the loose sense of the term. Mr. Chow is still the same though, merely thwarting through horrible behavior a situation that wound him in the past. I like how WKW sets him up for another unrequited love, with the same girl another love had remained unrequited in Chungking Express, but this is his chance to learn and eventually "that was the best summer he ever had". The sci-fi angle, where trains leave every hour for 2046 (the place of lost memories, from where no one comes back), is another mirror by which Mr. Chow can find himself, by which he can begin to acquiesce to the idea that sometimes you're not loved back because the other still loves someone else. At times, it seems even WKW is looking himself at that mirror to see or describe to himself what kind of movie he's making.The journey is very clear here, it could have been a very ordinary premise, the masterful touch being that we get inside the mind of the protagonist to experience the change like you can't experience a train moving until you get in one and look out the window. You can sit at the station and look at them go out every hour or you can sit at one and look at them arrive every hour but it's the existential middle of the process that makes the journey. In the end Mr. Chow remembers differently, he's not leaning on the shoulder of his old flame in that almost-b/w flashback shot, like a quintessential WKW character at film's end he's alone, but he's ready to be with others again. I like how the feelings experienced here are rendered with Cassavetian intimacy, how images hum with quiet intensity. I haven't seen My Blueberry Nights to see what he did next, but I feel WKW is still developing a language (one of the most interesting around for me) and I've great hopes because he's entry in To Each his Cinema is yet on another level. I was sorry to see WKW's marvelous visual vocabulary be reduced to the "slow tracking shot" in Mood for Love, here WKW picks it up again and he soars.

Hong Kong director Kar-Wai Wong's recent film 2046 is actually a continuation of the story he began in his 2001 art-house hit In the Mood for Love. Well, sort of, because while In the Mood had a fairly straightforward narrative everything in this new film is open to interpretation. Asian superstar Tony Leung is back as Chow Mo Wan but this is not the gentlemanly journalist we met in the first film. This Chow spends his days writing pulpy erotic fiction and his nights gambling, drinking and womanizing. In a voice-over narration Chow tells us about a sci-fi story he is working on. It's about a young Japanese man (Takuya Kimura) riding a train through time to 2046 where he hopes to recapture his lost memories and achieve emotional closure. The movie toggles back and forth between the writer's real life in 1960s Hong Kong and the futuristic fictional world of his imagination. Gradually Chow realizes he is writing about himself. Like his affair with carnal next door neighbour Bai (Crouching Tiger/Flying Daggers martial arts babe Ziyi Zhang as you have never seen her before), his unspoken feelings for Jing Wen (Faye Wong), the landlord's lonely young daughter and his liaison with an inscrutable lady gambler dubbed the Black Spider (Li Gong). None of these relationships last. "Why can't it be like it was before?" asks a heartbroken Bai and those words stay with him as he walks away because the women he meets in real life will never be able to measure up to the idealized perfection of the lost love who lives on in his memory. And so, like the character in his story, Chow will keep on travelling towards a place that only exists in his mind. If this sounds confusing you're not alone. "Actually we don't have an idea of what the story is about," Leung tells a French TV interviewer in a DVD featurette. Wong's films are not noted for their crisp linear plotting. He is all about mood, atmosphere and emotion. The camera-work is almost voyeuristic, shooting through windows, peering through peepholes, catching reflections in a mirror. The pace is languid, almost dream-like, the music on the soundtrack suffused with a gorgeous melancholy. A bittersweet sense of regret lingers in the eyes of these characters, like smoke curling lazily from a cigarette, creating an aura of sensual intrigue. Call it romantic noir. Some reviewers has likened Wong to a modern day Asian equivalent of the late great Federico Fellini and if that sounds appealing this may be the flavor you have been missing.But be warned: like many foreign delicacies this film can be an acquired taste.

The theme is about how a sad romantic past (a lost true love) can leave you emotionally "out of sync" unless you understand that by trying to recapture your past feelings, you are cutting off your ability to fall in love because your emotional anchor is looking backward. You see, the past is fixed, so it cannot change -- you can rely on the past, but the future because it is not establish fact yet, makes one feel powerless to affect the outcomes. So people just "give up" because there are too many variables that would need to come together to make that "perfect feeling of love" to happen again.2046 is a summation of two other movies this Director made .. "In the Mood for Love", primarily; but also "Days of Being Wild".In 2046; there are several stories, but the one involving Miss Wang and her Japanese boyfriend, is essentially a simpler version of the story the main character went through in "In the Mood for Love".Since the writers failed romance, we open with him saying how has become a womanizer and does not need a serious relationship - in fact he has changed a lot since "in the mood for love" where he was innocent and loving. Here the women love him, but he gives them "his time" in repayment. But he wants nothing beyond a surface fun friendship. Essentially, he has given up on falling in love because it is out of his control. We see the story of the special women in his life .. and all the people end up in the novel eventually - Lulu jealous boyfriend, Miss Wang, the Hotel owner (Miss Wang's dad) become the Train Captain of 2046 for instance.The stories weave around each other. The one that shows us how to escape 2046 is that of the sad story of Miss Wang and her Japanese boyfriend. Miss Wang is forbidden to see her boyfriend because he is Japanese, and the father would disown her if she saw him. She begins to talk to herself - repeating over and over the words she wished she could have said - I will come with you. Her story takes a break as she is eventually hospitalized; returning later in the story, a shell of her former self. The writer has been observing her relationship and is touched by her perseverance and sacrifice --she knows her situation is hopeless but she seems unable to give up. He eventually surprises us by helping her out by having the boyfriend's letters sent to him, and slipping them to her privately so her father is not mad. She eventually helps him write for the summer, and he falls in love with her - but she longs for her boyfriend. He then gives her a gift by writing a new novel called 2047 where he wants to show her how he sees her relationship with her Japanese boyfriend. He says that the more he wrote about the Japanese boyfriend, the more he felt he was really writing about himself.FROM 2046: "I once fell in love with someone. After a while she was gone. I couldn't stop wondering if she loved me or not. I went to 2046 hoping to find her there. But I never found her."We go to a dinner scene with Bai, which seems to serve no purpose, but shows us how she went looking for the writer the previous Christmas, and he was not there .. similar to 2046 quote above.He has figured out the emotional damage people get -- "Our cabin attendants are superbly designed... But there's only one problem: when they've served on so many long journeys, fatigue begins to set it. For example, they might want to laugh, but the smile would be slow to come. They might want to cry, but the tear wouldn't well up till the next day... "In the 2047 the Japanese character TAK concludes - "So at last, I got it. It's entirely beyond my control. The only thing left for me... was to give up." The writer then has dinner with Miss Wang - he asks her if she has heard from her boyfriend. She says she stopped because the situation was impossible because of her fathers feelings. The writer concludes - it is only impossible if you give up (take "no" for an answer), and offers to take her to call him. The expression he has as he looks in through the window is touching -- as she makes her call - he says he felt like Santa that year.Mr Wang meets up with the writer to say that he is off to Japan for his daughter's wedding. The father says he has learned that all he wants is for his daughter to be happy. So the impossible has happened. Mr Wang adds .. "my daughter loved 2047; but wishes you would change the ending as its too sad." Which begs the question - can our main character get a happy ending himself.He meets Bai again for dinner, she hands him the $10 bills he had given her, and he pays for dinner without realizing."He didn't turn back. It's AS IF HE BOARDED A VERY LONG TRAIN headed for a drowsy future through the unfathomable night"In short, he knew he was stuck in 2046 forever because he had given up. However, he was able prevent the couple from giving up and they got out of 2046.The only theme I've not touched upon is the "single gloved hand" .. simply put it shows a past undisclosed but visible to everyone.