Recencies van critici

The film is divided into episodes centered on different women, who are played magnificently by Carina Lau, Zhang Ziyi, Faye Wong, and Gong Li. (As in LOVE, the women are magnificently dressed too.) This was Wong's first film in widescreen, though he shot most of it in medium close-up—the film transpires in an intimate space where it seems that sex (or, possibly, a deeper connection) is only a breath away.

Wong and Doyle conjure gorgeous scifi images in the sleek confines of the 2046 train and the blank-eyed yet mysteriously emotive robots who stalk the deserted conveyance, Kimura's perfect manga hero their detached and pensive companion-lover.

The gorgeous composition and moody texture of setting is everything. Doorways and draperies frame encounters, intertwined with sci-fi sequences from the novel Chow is writing in which lonely souls on a vast railway network try to reach 2046 – where it's said nothing changes, so there is never loss.

Like Before Sunset, this continuation of characters from an earlier film [In the Mood for Love]... rejuvenates and deepens the possibilities of the oft-scorned term "sequel," which typically indicates nothing more than a passionless cashing-in on an established brand, worlds away from the glorious expansions proved possible by Linklater and Wong... From the stolidity of that simple number, Wong abstracts and spins one of the most searingly beautiful evocations of lost love ever put to celluloid.

For the longest, craziest and most passionate time, "2046" is at its best in tracking the odd dynamism of [the] relationship [between Bai Ling and Chow Mo]; it makes each of them seem superbly alive, and when it's over, it's heartbreaking

The movie as a whole, unfortunately, never seems sure of itself. It's like a sketchbook. These are images, tones, dialogue and characters that Wong is sure of, and he practices them, but he does not seem very sure why he is making the movie, or where it should end.

Wong Kar-Wai’s long-awaited, sumptuous follow-up to ‘In the Mood for Love’ makes for a rapturous cinematic experience... It may help if you grasp the many allusions to Wong’s earlier films (including, notably, ‘Days of Being Wild’), but it’s far from necessary. This, after all, is undeniably real cinema.

This long, enigmatic, rapturously beautiful meditation on romance and remembrance has been impatiently awaited by moviegoers who fell under the spell of ''In the Mood for Love..." The new film lives up to expectations and, indeed, pushes past them into virtually unmapped territory. It takes chances, sometimes unwisely, and it is not an experience for the casual viewer.

Wong is less abashed by the insanely beautiful than any other current director. Every shot is colored and composed to within an inch of its life, which may be another way of saying that “2046” is a near-death experience.

As luscious and absorbing as "2046" is, I sometimes had the feeling that Wong had made it by allowing the theme and atmosphere of "In the Mood for Love" to hang on the vine too long, until they decayed and rotted, started to turn funny colors and give off intoxicating fumes.

An ecstatically beautiful film... Like some avant-garde filmmakers and like his contemporary, Hou Hsiao-hsien of Taiwan, among precious few others these days, Mr. Wong makes movies, still a young art, that create meaning through visual images, not just words.

[Tony Leung] drifts from partner to partner, finding a fellowship of the disappointed in a film that's longer and looser (and perhaps unavoidably lesser) than the sustained masterfulness of its predecessor, but just as memorable and emotionally intense as any of Wong's films. It's a mood as much as a movie.