Possibly the most highly anticipated film from Hong Kong this year is undoubtedly the brand new piece from Wong Kar Wai, one of the world's most acclaimed directors. Five years in the making and starring some of the biggest stars in Asia, 2046 is not merely a film, it is a cultural event of 2004.

With a cast featuring Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Maggie Cheung, Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, Carina Lau, Faye Wong and Kimura Takuya one cannot deny the star power in this project, but the spotlight is really on Wong. His usual production collaborators such as production designer and editor William Cheng and cinematographer Christopher Doyle are back on board for this ride into the world that only Wong Kar Wai can conjure. Is 2046 a hotel room number? A train to the future? A memory? The year before China¡¯s fifty-year of self-governing promise for Hong Kong expires? In many ways, it is all of the above, but also none of the above. Like all previous Wong films, it is the journey, and not the destination that matters, and all these inhabitants in his film are haunted not by the fear of the future but by the pain of the past.

Loosely a sequel to Wong's previous film, In the Mood for Love, Tony Leung once again plays writer Chow Mo Wan, but he is nothing like the Chow Mo Wan from the previous film. Now Chow has become a womanizer who writes soft pornographic stories to sustain his boozing habits. In the film we see his various relationships with a group of women: Black Spider (Gong Li) in Singapore, whose real name, Su Li Zhen, is the same as slz 1960 (Maggie Cheung), his lover in In The Mood for Love. His friendship with Mimi (Carina Lau reprising a previous WKW role), Wang Jing Wen (Faye Wong), the daughter of the motel owner who is in love with a Japanese man (Kimura Takuya) and his illicit affair with callgirl Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi), a resident in room 2046. Is Chow Mo Wan really a completely different character, existing in a parallel world to In the Mood for Love, or is he really the same character but is now completely destroyed by a failed romance?

With Cheng's luscious art direction, Doyle's stunning cinematography, a hypnotic soundtrack by Peer Raben and Shigeru Umebayashi, as well as stunning performances from the cast, 2046, is the latest masterpiece from writer/producer/director Wong Kar Wai. The story is presented to you, and it's up to you to find its own meaning.