2046 recaptures lost memories of love

After 2046's debut in Cannes in May, there have been stories about how the director changed the film and reneged on promises to show it first at various festivals.

"Edinburgh [festival] was never planned by us or Wong Kar-wai (王家衛)," says Fortissimo co-president Wouter Barendrecht.

"We always knew that the film would be delivered just before the opening in Asia in early October."

Only a week before Edinburgh began in August, the festival was forced to announce that it was replacing 2046 with E J Yong's Korean film, Untold Scandal.

The story of the production's tortuous progress toward the screen is nearly as dense as that of the film itself. Wong, the lanky geek with the signature silver-rimmed shades, began shooting four years ago. He went through three cinematographers: Wong regular Christopher Doyle had to move on to another production. "You have to realize that 80 percent to 90 percent of those four years were spent waiting," says Wong.

"We had to wait during the SARS epidemic, because many of the crew members had to go back to their home countries. We had to deal with revised actors' schedules, permits and locations."

He grins. "Having nothing to do for so much of the time was a problem. It also gave me a lot of time to think about changes, so I did a lot of reshooting."

Then there was Cannes.

Wong arrived with a bang. At the very last moment, he hand-delivered reels of the US$15m feature, the festival's most eagerly anticipated movie.

He had been in Paris working on computer-generated imagery (CGI), in order to create a composite of the background from material shot in different regions of Asia. The festival even had to shove the press screening of Olivier Assayas's Clean to another slot to accommodate 2046.

In spite of the accusations of a publicity stunt from some quarters, Wong remained hopeful. "If I'm so lucky to get the Palme d'Or, we've worked so hard, I think we would deserve it," he said at the time.

Happy Together had earned him the best director award in 1997, and Tony Leung (梁朝偉) was named best actor in 2000 for In the Mood for Love. (花樣年華)

Unfortunately, Wong and 2046, arguably a masterpiece, left Cannes with a whimper -- and prizeless.

After the festival, Wong returned to Paris not only to work further on CGI but -- at first in secret -- to re-edit the film. To make Cannes's deadline, he had to cut out some scenes that have subsequently been reinstated.

Rumors of further reshooting also surfaced, but they were unfounded. "The stars gathered in Hong Kong to shoot publicity photos and poster images," says Barendrecht.

Even some of 2046's biggest fans have found the plot extremely difficult to follow, though a second viewing clarifies things.

Set mostly in the 1960s, 2046 -- the Cannes version -- comprises three intersecting stories. The linchpin is Chow, played by Leung, who is reprising his character from In the Mood for Love. In the earlier film, set in Hong Kong in 1962, Chow, who takes a stab at writing martial arts novels, presumably never consummates a mutually sublimated affair with Maggie Cheung's (張曼玉) Su Li Zhen, although they know that their spouses are seeing each other.

Frustrated, he leaves for Singapore.

In 2046, Chow has returned to Hong Kong, but this softspoken man has become a hedonistic, mustachioed sleazeball. He has numerous one-night stands and earns extra money hosting dinners for low-lifes and letting out his room to their women.