Director Wong Kar-wai has taken us down time’s dark corridors before (2000’s “In the Mood for Love”); his latest film, “2046,” makes a quantum leap, both backward and forward.

The same elements as the wrenching “In the Mood for Love” are present: a lush, evocative score, a main character endlessly searching for love, and unattainable feminine allure.

Tony Leung returns as Mr. Chow, the journalist-writer and seeker of love. Maggie Cheung, his co-star from “In the Mood,” is shown in flashback. Now, Chow takes his odyssey of love further, through a succession of beauties. Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, Faye Wong and Carina Lau depict the objects of his longing at various stages of his life.

The story is set in the 1960s, and the women are gowned, coifed and made up with great elegance. Chow is by now a divorcé, a newspaperman who writes cheap science fiction on the side, for extra money.

Leung has all the makings of a great movie star: he’s handsome, intense, sensitive, romantic. He is also a wonderful actor, his Chow by turns ardent and sweet, and something of a cad, with the women he pursues.

The movie is an interesting blend of period love story and strange science fiction adventure. Chow exists in the here-and-now of 1960s Hong Kong and Singapore. But his alter ego(a young Japanese man) is shown rocketing through a kind of time tunnel to the future--perhaps the year 2046. The significance of the number is two-fold; the hotel room shared by Chow and his lover in the first movie is the same. And in real life, the year 2046 is when Hong Kong will surrender its status as a self-regulating entity and be fully governed by the Republic of China.

Wong is a master of mood, supported by the sumptuous work of cinematographer Christopher Doyle. Dark rainy streets, small hotel rooms, crowded restaurants, form the backdrop for these urban lovers.

The music is lush and heartbreaking. “Sibonay,” “Cara Nome” from the opera “Norma,” a main theme composed by Shigeru Umebayashi, help sustain the romanticism.
With “2046,” Wong Kar-wai solidifies his position as a cinema master. Tony Leung is right up there with him, modern man as an apprentice of love.

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