There’s not a better-suited film to the broad horizontal strokes of the Embassy at this year’s TNZIFF than Wong Kar-wai’s 2046; if not for Chris Doyle’s astronomically high bar of cinematography, then for the girls. That’s not to detract from the film’s status as a “date movie”, mind you, which I’m sure caters equally to the opposite sexes’ yearning for the dapper romantic, but if ever a film embodied the movie crush, this is it.

Give or take, 2046 can be viewed as an Asian riff on François Truffaut’s 400 Blows epilogue, Love on the Run. In that film, Antoine Doinel’s wisp of a lifecycle concluded via a series of flashbacks and chance encounters with past and present flings, and if you’ve ever followed Jean-Pierre Léaud’s hell raiser across the 4-and-a-half movies he aged through (Criterion’s The Adventures of Antoine Doinel comes recommended, available from Wellington City Library), then you’ll know his vice was falling in and out of love with ridiculously gorgeous French women. Tony Leung possesses the same boyish-yet-weathered uncertainty of Antoine, and the character he reprises can be traced right back to Days of Being Wild and In the Mood For Love (consider 2046 a kind of Revenge of the Sith). Like Truffaut’s swansong, the impending closure here feels just right; Wong seems to be farewelling a chapter of his work, requiring one last hurray in the form of a Greatest Hits compilation before signing off.

Carina Lau and Maggie Cheung make brief return appearances, but it’s a Japanese-reciting Faye Wong in black pumps and Doris Day attire that truly reignites for me the same heart-fluttering smitten of, say, the Snoopy-nightie moment in Love on the Run, or Delphine Seyrig’s Mrs. Robinson impression in Stolen Kisses (third in the series, and one of the best rom-coms ever). Faye memorably played the Jean Seberg variant in Chungking Express, prompting Quentin Tarantino to immediately declare his love for her (among others *sheepish look*). Blame that infatuation not on her beatnik hairdo or California Dreaming, but those deep brown eyes we’d surely drown in if it weren’t for her Revlon-curled lashes to hang on to. Zhang Ziyi – she seems to be in just about everything these days (including Seijun Suzuki’s Princess Raccoon, which the festival must pick up next year) – is a tease in this film, but also a temperamental flaunt. Wong clearly understands that she’s innately bitchy, which goes someway to explaining Tony Leung’s pining for the sultry Gong Li. I’ve never quite understood why so many non-Asian heterosexuals find her desirable, but perhaps the hard-to-get bitchiness has something to do with it. These are all needless girl debates, of course, because 2046 is in of itself a total flirt – a frisky, irresistible affaire de coeur with more than enough oriental to go around… and fall in love with.—TW

» 2046.co.uk