Can Love Once Lost Ever Be Found?

"Everyone who goes to 2046 has the same intention, they want to recapture lost memories. Because in 2046 nothing ever changes." So starts Wong Kar Wai's magnificent tale of the intersection of love, space and time, "2046." The movie focuses primarily on Chow Mo Wan, played by Tony Leung. It also shows the tangential stories of others that give his context and texture. The film is a followup to "In the Mood for Love," which was delicate look at two neighbors who find companionship and comfort in one another as they come to the realization that their own spouses are carrying on an extramarital affair with the other's.

Visually, Wong has created another powerful film using limited lighting and darker tones to infuse it with sensuality. The scenes take place in confined spaces that lend intimacy to the characters and bring us closer to them. The lack of space also suggests the confined nature of their lives where their actions are limited and movement dictated. Science fiction is a leitmotif that movie plays with, mainly due to the imaginative possibility that it holds for characters who are lacking in it.

"2046" finds Chow, no longer the cuckold, a playboy who writes by day and parties with friends by night. Bai Ling, played by Zhang Ziyi in a magnificent but largely overlooked performance, enters the story very early and quickly becomes Chow's main love interest. It is through Chow's relationship with her that we understand what he has become by this film, a man held by the past yet so scarred by it as well that his heart is no longer open.

2046 has become a metaphor for Chow's life and is the films primary leitmotif. It represents the quest for missed opportunities and moments. Characters find love in the film but they do not recognize it or embrace it typically until it is too late. And once they discover what their inaction or slow response has cost them, they try and recapture it, their lost memories, an impossibility by the very definition. But the person whose love was unrequited by the delayed response time of the object of his/her affection is equally doomed. At one point, Chow reflects, "I slowly began to doubt myself. Maybe the reason she didn't answer was not that her reactions were delayed but simply that she didn't love me. So at last, I got it. It's entirely out of my control. The only thing left for me...was to give up."

And thus we see driving forces that dictate the hopeless and endless wandering of the characters in the world that "2046" presents. One person falls in love and while the other is delaying, he/she gives up. The other slowly comes to realize what he/she had and has now lost and begins the quest to recapture it, a quest that will bear no fruit. Yet though the person who loved first has moved on, he/she hasn't really. As Chow recounts, "I once fell in love with someone. I couldn't stop wondering if she loved me back. I found an android which looked just like her. I hoped she would give me the answer." In seeking out new lovers, the person seeks to decipher the past, but this too is impossible. By the end, the film's ultimate message on moments and seizing them when they are there, rings profoundly true: "Love is all a matter of timing. It's no good meeting the right person too soon or too late. If I'd lived in another time or place...my story might have had a very different ending."