The movie starts with Tony Leung pursuing the unattainable Zhang Ziyi.
He employs a combination of aggression and patience, to seduce her. She falls in love with him . She pleads with him to stay true to her, and he refuses. She cries. He brings another girl home. Zhang Ziyi moves out, but can't get over him.
Repeat with the seduction of Gong Li, considered for a decade the most beautiful actress in China.
Flashback to a repeat with the impossibly graceful Maggie Cheung.
My first reaction was, "WTF? Does this director not get laid enough in real life? Why is his movie living out the fantasy of seducing every famous Chinese actress?"
Then I read the wikipedia article. It claims Tony fell so hard for Maggie Cheung that everafter he looked for traces of her in other women. Seeing her traits in them drew him, but couldn't keep him, since his heart belonged still to Maggie.
That is a more generous theory.
The same director made a prequel where the main guy is a playboy who feels abandoned by his mother. He seduces two women and promptly breaks both their hearts.
I think the theme is a good one. Sometimes we're broken by events early in life, and then we keep looking for a repeat of that event so that we can re-live it and fix it this time around. Except we can't actually fix it, so it never quite works out.
7 comments:
So have you watched "In the Mood for Love" yet? (the previous one, starring Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in 1960s HK.)
I've only seen ITMFL and "Chungking Express" but I think Wong Kar Wai's films aren't for me.
When the event repeated, I would try another way to make it better. I cannot guarantee a fix. Just try different ways until it's good enough.
Yes, things that cause immense pain in early life end up becoming a soure of extreme attraction later in life. Completely backwards, but that's how we work. Dr. Drew says this all the time...
Dr. Drew is awesome! His ability to diagnose wackos is second to none.
The problem with your strategy, general, is that you're still fighting the last war.
Paraphrased from Guns of August
Larry
at theDatingReport dot com
p.s. See you at Stirr.net!
I think I know what you meant by "finally" finishing the movie.
It came highly recommended, but it made no freakin sense to me! So I never quite finished it.
Now In the Mood for Love is another thing... I loved it... if you're in a hurry the movie can seem a little pointless... but if you pay attention to the little nuances, the movie is really cool and I love the soundtrack.. it really sets the "mood".
This is a multi part series, you only watched the last part!
I read 2046 may not be last either.
Post a Comment