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How does Wong Kar-wai know when a film is done? When he runs out of funds—or a festival looms. Thank goodness for Cannes.

By Dana Thomas
Newsweek International Edition
6.21.04

June 21 issue - In april of last year Cannes Film Festival artistic director Thierry Fremaux called Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar-wai in Hong Kong to see if "2046," the highly anticipated follow-up to his 2000 hit, "In the Mood for Love," would be ready in time for the festival a few weeks later. "I really need another month," Wong replied. A year later Fremaux called him back. "Is it finished?" he asked. Not yet. In fact, Wong was still filming—a staggering four years after shooting had begun. But Wong promised Fremaux that he'd get it done in time.

He did—but just barely. At the festival last month Fremaux had to cancel the morning press screening because the film hadn't come in yet. That evening the reels arrived by plane directly from the lab in Paris just in time for the gala screening at the Palais des Festivals. It was the first time Wong actually saw his film all the way through in a theater. Even then he didn't think it was finished. "Every minute I thought I would have a heart attack," he says. "There were a few technical problems at one point I thought, 'Why did it suddenly become so loud?' But it's much better than I imagined."

That's filmmaking with cinema's greatest mad scientist: a grand experiment that goes on for years until he is forced to throw the switch and see what he's created. Wong has earned the moniker "Godard of the East," and while his movies are as existential and his sets as free-form as those of the French New Wave pioneer, he goes beyond that. Wong's movies—including the delightful romantic comedy "Chungking Express," the melancholy gay love story "Happy Together" and the tragic romance "In the Mood for Love"—are artful, wholly original mazes of emotion that help push the craft of cinema forward.

Now "2046" is bound to do the same. Set in Hong Kong in the 1960s, it picks up sometime after "In the Mood" left off. Chow Mo Wan, played by Tony Leung, bruised from his breakup with Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung), has been sacked from his job as a newspaper editor and spends his time seducing upmarket call girls. The first one he goes home with lives in room 2046 of a seedy hotel. He moves into the vacant room next door and begins writing sci-fi novels about a futuristic city called 2046, where people go to recapture their lost memories. Chow sinks deeper into darkness—drinking, gambling and running scams to raise money for rent. He gets caught up in a relation-ship with the new occupant of 2046, a ballroom consort named Bai Ling, played with startling passion by the ravishing 25-year-old Zhang Ziyi ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"). After that affair turns sour, Chow connects with a devastating Cambodian professional gambler (Gong Li), who mysteriously carries the same name as Chow's paramour in "In the Mood."

The film, a gorgeous work on both esthetic and emotional levels, is a complicated elegy to Hong Kong's past as well as the future: 2046 is the last year the territory will enjoy its current level of autonomy before being wholly integrated into China. Like Wong's previous work, "2046" explores the essence of relationships, the importance of timing and the power of memories. The director insists that "2046" is not a sequel to "In the Mood" but rather "the continuation of one character, the writer." And even that character appears in a new form. "Wong told me, 'This time I want you to play a [Charles] Bukowski kind of man, very dark, very mean'," says Leung. "But I had difficulties, because I would go back to the previous Mr. Chow very unconsciously. Wong would see it and tell me, 'No, that's the old character'."

As usual, Wong asked the actors to improvise most of the film. He doesn't write scripts and gives only general outlines. Instead, he prefers to have the actors inhabit their characters and then let them tell the tale. He also likes to explore all the possible directions a story can take—which makes for an interminable shooting schedule and confused performers. Leung, who has made five films with Wong, is a pro by now, but it took him a long time to get used to the process. "The strangest thing for an actor is to not know what the story is about," he says. "And then you never know if [Wong] will use what you shot. Maybe he'll reshoot this whole scene again in a restaurant two months later, and maybe half a year later he'll reshoot this scene on a beach. It's very frustrating. You want to shout, 'What do you want?' For newcomers it's torture."

But it allows for a great deal of flexibility right up to the final cut. Originally, "2046" was set in the future with flashbacks to the past. Then it changed into a story set in the 1960s with a futuristic world created by Chow. Likewise, Gong Li was brought in at the end for what was meant to be a small part. But the director became so fascinated with her character that he gave her more screen time. Wong eventually wraps a film either because he's out of money or because a festival deadline looms. "If it were not for Cannes," says Leung, "we could have kept working on this film for two more years."

Wong's obsession with separation and the role of memory can be traced directly to his childhood. Born in Shanghai in the late 1950s, he moved with his mother to Hong Kong in 1963, joining his father; soon afterward the Cultural Revolution erupted, trapping his older brother and sister at his grandparents' on the mainland, where they remained. For years the family communicated by letter.

After high school Wong studied graphic design, then he wrote soap operas for Hong Kong's Television Broadcasts station. He spent the 1980s writing screenplays in every genre from comedy to porn, and made his directorial debut in 1989 with "As Tears Go By," a quirky gangster homage to Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets." He followed that with "Days of Being Wild," a stylized study of 1960s Hong Kong youth, and, in 1994, "Ashes of Time," a beautiful period martial-arts drama starring Cheung and Leung. His international breakthrough came with the 1994 box-office hit "Chung-king Express," an action comedy about two cops and their complicated love lives.

Now that "2046" is completed—more or less—Wong is plotting his next feature, a biopic on the kung fu master Bruce Lee, starring Leung. "It will have a real story, with more structure, and we will have some information to work with," Leung says, a hint of relief in his voice. But then anxiety creeps back in. "Can you imagine Wong Kar-wai doing a kung fu movie? I told him, 'I might die before you finish that movie!' " But it will almost surely be worth the wait.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

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