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A sort-of sequel to 2000's lush, melancholy In the Mood for Love, Wong's latest film extends his meditation on lost love to later years, other lives and even an imaginary science-fiction universe. What he leaves behind in narrative coherence (always a relative term in Wong's case, anyway) he more than makes up for in sheer artistry. And it's light-years away from the gorgeous but incomprehensible Ashes of Time. The themes are clear in 2046: Loneliness, companionship, living in the past, and above all, trying to recover (or forget) lost loves. Tony Leung Chiu-Wai reprises his role as writer Chow Mo Wan, who's returned to Hong Kong from a few years in Singapore. He goes back to journalism and starts writing science fiction on the side while having great success as a ladies' man. Around the cheap hotel room where he lives, especially in the room next door (2046), romances involving Chow and others crackle to life like stations on an old radio dial, fading and later returning. Leung is the heart of the film amid an all-star cast featuring Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, Chang Chen, Faye Wong and more. A master of naturalism, Leung in his mid-forties has aged into one of the world's great actors. His Chow this time is tamped down, with no illusions in love and nothing to prove, and Leung exudes an unforced masculinity. The film's look is another love letter to the Sixties, full of green walls and bright textiles, but this time the treatment, like the story, is more daring. Many of the head shots are dominated by out-of-focus walls or doors with the speaker at the edge of the screen. As the camera floats around and the film drifts in and out of slow motion, Nat King Cole and Latin rhythms again caress the lovelorn. The sci-fi sequences are more of a stretch, thematically and visually, but Wong has the surest hand in film today.