lemonberry
Joined: 28 Jul 2003 Posts: 796
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Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2005 7:55 pm Post subject: |
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New York Daily News
In the sequel,
Chow's a sex hound
2046. With Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li. Director: Wong Kar Wai (2:09). R: Sexuality. At Lincoln Plaza and Landmark Sunshine.
If you sympathized with Tony Leung's sexually frustrated character in Wong Kar Wai's sublime "In the Mood for Love" (2000), get over it. The guy has more sex in the sequel than Wilt Chamberlain had during a championship season.
Leung's Chow Mo-wan, the once quietly respectful newspaper reporter, turns up in "2046" as a short-story writer, would-be sci-fi novelist, scam artist and horn-dog hustler.
Sporting a pencil-thin mustache and a Clark Gable glint in his eyes, Chow has to scrape women off his arm at the end of a night of drink and trolling in Hong Kong clubs.
What a broken heart and four years can do to a man.
In the first film, set in 1962, Chow fell in love with his next-door neighbor (Maggie Cheung) while the two were commiserating over the affair of their spouses. But as the temperature rose between them, they refused to commit the same infidelity that had brought them together.
It's now 1966, noted by the anti-colonial riots going on outside while Chow stays on the hunt. After learning that a former lover has been stabbed by a jealous boyfriend in a hotel room bearing the same number - 2046 - as the title of his futuristic novel, he moves into room 2047.
There, he divides his time between spying on the subsequent female guests staying in room 2046 and expanding the fantasy of his story, which is about a time/place where people go to relive memories, never to return.
The director plays the sci-fi story and Chow's scurrilous lifestyle on parallel tracks, inserting the people who inspire his fictional characters into the lush fantasy sequences.
Like Wong's past films, "2046" is lovely to behold, elegantly moody and rich in atmospherics. And the women caught in Chow's web are extraordinary beauties, not least the prostitute Bai Ling played to perfection by the luminous Zhang Ziyi.
There is a touch of Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage" in the relationship between Chow and Bai Ling, though the obsessed lover here is the prostitute.
Despite Chow's behavioral appearance as a cad nonpareil, the deceptively naive Bai Ling throws herself into the relationship and is emotionally humiliated for her trouble.
That Chow ultimately finds himself on the wrong end of unrequited love with the hotel owner's daughter (Faye Wong) is not quite enough to redeem his womanizing.
As a huge fan of "In the Mood for Love," I have to say liked Chow Mo-wan a lot better when he wasn't getting any.
Originally published on August 5, 2005
Jack Mathews has been a critic, reporter, columnist and movie editor for 25 years and for many of the largest circulation newspapers in the country. |
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