Good film about love and the pain that such feeling can bring but also, besides this more obvious element, very nice story looking into the life, and creative and professional approach of a writer.

Tony Leung reprises his role of Chow Mo-wan from In the Mood for Love in this quite independent but still connected sequel to the 2000’s film, where he will be trying to forget his past love embarking on various stories with different kinds of women while he is trying to put pen to paper his deepest and most personal feelings in a sci-fi novel named, just like the movie, “2046”.

Each one of these women will represent his various most ingrained personal traits: Bai Ling (played by Ziyi Zhang) the passion and impetuosity, Wang Jing-wen (Faye Wong) the psyche and romanticism, and Su Li-zhen (Gong Li) the loneliness and melancholy.

Unfortunately, although the set-up may seem very interesting the mise-en-scene and actual telling of the different stories is not the most on point in Wong Kar-Wai’s career. First, the way Bai Ling’s story is presented visually is rather fun and entertaining, but its content falls flat; Wang Jing-wen’s part is by far the most interesting from a psychological point of view but formally the overuse of the slow filming and panning, and the insisting classical music accompanying the tale fiddles a bit in between the mastery of Wong Kar-Wai using such techniques and the self-mockery and satire of his own approach, which undoubtedly is not his intention; lastly Su Li-zhen’s story has potential but it just stays on that since its timespan is too limited to get ourselves fully immersed on the relationship.

On the other hand, as it was mentioned, some emphasis should also be made on the presentation of a writer’s way of life. Although much secondary to the main plot/s it is present all throughout the movie. Through it we can see the inner debates of such a profession and art having on one side the economical need to write about everything and anything even if you are not emotionally invested into it (here we would have our main character and his work as a journalist) and trying to juggle this to your own intrinsically creative needs and the need to write your emotions down, either in the form of fiction or not, to being able to cope with them even if it means self-isolation and a painful self-analysis (obviously here we would have Chow Mo-wan’s approach to writing his novels).

All in all, 2046 is a movie with a great premise and overall arch that sadly gets a bit lost and becomes slightly uneven at some points through its many different stories and visual styles. This results in an enjoyable piece that once the credits start rolling will leave you both satisfied and moved but also it will leave you thinking that maybe one slight tweak here or there would have made it even more poignant.