Film News: 2046, Kar-Wai Wong

Debuted in last years installment of the Cannes film festival, the erotically illusive anomaly known as 2046 finally made it after almost five years in production, several cast changes, the costly metamorphosis of a studio set, and two completely different edits.

Under the direction of Hong Kong indie film genius, Kar-Wai Wong, and an impressive cast that includes Zhang Ziyi ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), Gong Li ("The Emperor and the Assassin"), and Tony Leung ("Infernal Affairs"), the heavily-buzzed and somewhat controversial film has already opened across most of the globe.

The bizarre tale takes place in early Sixties in Hong Kong, and echoes with repetitious dreamlike scenarios and plenty of meta-narrative. Essentially, it is a ghost story haunted by the absence of lost love. The main character in the film, Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung), is a journalist who is caught in a net of women, seduction, love, and dual realities. As stated in one of his inner monologues in the film, "I once fell in love with someone. After a while, she wasn't there. I went to 2046. I thought she might be waiting for me there. But I couldn't find her. I can't stop wondering if she loved me or not." In the film, every passenger who rides the train to 2046 has the same aspirations of recapturing some lost memories, and that's because nothing ever changes in 2046. However, nobody knows if that can actually be attained, because nobody's ever come back. For Chow Mo Wan, all of the women of 2046 are, in a sense, aspects of one woman, and not necessarily the one he's looking for, but the one she might or could have been, yet we discover that he may never truly know for sure.

Filmed with breathtaking cinematography, presented through the direction of an incredibly masterful director, and showcasing incredible sets, costumes, and superb acting, the film has already won the praise of many respected film critics world wide. Keep an eye out, as earlier this year Sony Pictures snagged the North American rights to the film, and plans to release it in the U.S. some time in the fall.