2046: Critic Reviews

As a cinematic bath for the senses, it's a rush, a swoon.

The result is an unqualified triumph.

Sensationally lush and languorous.

[Zhang's] identity is so strong that it seems to hold the story together most of the time; it really should have been only about her.

Long, enigmatic, rapturously beautiful meditation on romance and remembrance.

A sweaty, teeming, hot-to-the-touch life-swarm of a movie.

Like Wong's past films, 2046 is lovely to behold, elegantly moody and rich in atmospherics.

Some directors wouldn't know a true love story if it smacked them in the face like a big sloppy kiss.

In a film that likes teasing mysteries, the greatest revelation is Ziyi Zhang.

Wong's admirers, like those of Stanley Kubrick, thrill to his visual dictatorship, but in both instances the inquiry into passion can seem a weirdly impassive affair.

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.

At its best, it drenches the screen with sensuous poetry and touches a core of sadness.

The romantic fatalism is so lush that you're invited to get lost in it.

It's all terribly atmospheric, and if you're in the mood for atmosphere, 2046 delivers.

The film is a beautiful reverie, a kind of poem about lovers briefly glimpsed and never forgotten.

Wong offers an artful meditation on the nature of love, making effective use of color schemes (yellows, greens and reds), placid shotmaking and diverse music to deliver a sultry portrait of postwar Hong Kong.

Quite simply an incomparably sublime work of art, a triumph of lyricism over narrative in the cinema, and the most exquisite homage to the beauty of women it has ever been my privilege to witness on the screen.

Mainland actress Zhang Ziyi proves she's a star of major range and luminosity ... while Hong Kong leading man Tony Leung Chiu-wai carries the pic with the charm of a young Clark Gable.

2046 is a bit overlong and not for all tastes, but fans of In the Mood for Love will relish this second helping, which is more emotionally substantial than the first.

It is best to think of 2046 as a series of short stories, pulp fiction penned by a master mood-setter.

A beautifully flawed film.

Among the most beautiful and most mysterious movies I've ever seen.

The stilted dialogue and a mostly stagnant story line gum up the works.

Want to see a great kiss? There's one in 2046, between Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Gong Li.

A gorgeous, fevered dream of a movie that blends recollection, imagination and temporal dislocation to create an emotional portrait of chaos in the aftermath of heartbreak.