Wong here decelerates his signature-style pacing and instead reveals the most intimate insight on love; this is love as poetry, poetry as fantasies, fantasies as secrets, secrets as whispers and whispers as the story that unfolds. Essential to see no matter what. A so-called sequel to "Days of Being Wild" (1991). "2046" (2004) simply does not reveal its riches if you have not seen this.

It is very easy to stop at one's tracks and see how this and "My Blueberry Nights" go to the self-consciously pretentious territory. Yet if you follow, you can find one of the most expertly-edited and filmed film ever, as well as one of the most deeply self-referential. This makes the longing in "In The Mood For Love" amplify in its effect, and that in turn makes this film ever as bittersweet.

Until Amazon has put up an information page for the film itself I will link to this product, which is in fact a book by Greenaway about the painting. Not Greenaway's best, but a wonderful return to the Greenaway we love: daring cosmology, painterly use of space and colour, and very deep self-reference. We have all that here, as Rembrandt is the utmost master in handling light and shadow.