2046
Year: | 2005 |
Director: | Wong Kar Wai |
Writer: | Wong Kar Wai |
Cast: | Tony Leung, Ziyi Zhang, Gong Li |
If a movie expects us to dredge up an ounce of sympathy for the plight of a lead male character, here's a tip; don't make him a writer playboy bachelor who goes through three gorgeous women that all fall in love with him and have him rebuff them because he doesn't want to be tied down.
That single aspect pretty much spoiled the whole film for me. The cinematography was indeed lush and beautiful as the critics all said, but the storyline was too Lynchian and I didn't get the parable about the novel and the year 2046.
A man comes to Hong Kong in the 1960s to be a writer and enjoy the liberal and prosperous times of the city. He ends up getting regular sex from the classy hooker who lives next door (Zhang), then the daughter of the hotel's owner, then a professional gambler and something of a femme fatale (Li). And for some reason he just keeps knocking them back.
It had something to do with a novel he was writing set in the year 2046, how you can travel there by train and the train is populated with female robot versions of the women he knows in his life. Poetic and good-looking but that's all.