Love is all about timing. I think this is stated explicitly somewhere in 2046, but even it isn't, the statement couldn't be more clearly expressed. The movie feels like a series of random chemical reactions, most of which result in singularly useless substances but which observed together can lead to larger theories. Here, the theory states that fortunate timing, with its unpredictability, its intangibility, and its unforetellable lifespan, is such a strong determinant of love that subsequent attempts to capture lost instances of it are futile.

2046, Wong Kar Wai's sequel to In the Mood for Love, follows the protagonist Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) in the years after his fateful encounter with Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk, in a cameo role here). He becomes a writer of cheap novels, using it as a means to channel his thoughts and memories about the elusiveness of love. In the meantime, he plays out his frustrations with the subject by embarking on several relationships with various beautful women. All the while, he is consciously assessing the events even as he actively utilizes his power to affect them.

The movie is an almost randomly sequenced collection of all of these elements -- we see not only the details of Chow's liaisons but also pieces of a science fiction work he's writing called "2046" which takes place in that year (the year China gets to take full control of Hong Kong's identity). 2046 is also the number of the room adjacent to his, and more often than not, the latest object of his affection or observance lives there. We should not be surprised if pieces of the story of Chow's friendship with Wang Jing Wen (Faye Wong) bookends the story of his relationship with Bai Ling (Ziyi Zhang) -- with any of these subject to interruption by a glimpse of scenes in the sci-fi novel, where Faye Wong plays an android who meets up with a lonely traveler (Takuya Kimura).

There's a method to the madness here: 2046 attempts to capture the melancholy rhythms of a memory collage playing in the head of a man who had fallen into a love that didn't work out. It's comprised of romanticized visuals, a palette of warm colors that glow in a lonely, seedy night life. It contains musical cues which create strong memory associations to individuals, locations, or certain times of the year. It emphasizes repeated phrases that a person remembers so vividly that they begin to take on poetic resonance. The only things missing are the smells, which is a shame because they're often considered the strongest links to memories.

Wong Kar Wai must be a romantic of the most incurable kind. I find 2046 to be a very brave baring of a dramatic soul -- the kind that gives weight to moments which don't have significance to anyone except a person with too much time to think and wallow in his or her sad situation of unlucky love. I don't know if you've been there before, but I have. It's not a happy place. You just want to hurt the world because no one appreciates how you feel, but, no, actually you don't -- you'd give it a big hug if only something came along to prove that things can and will work out. This is a destructive place to linger in, and yet it can create the most striking of images and the most profound of thoughts. If there's truth to the theory that the most interesting art is borne from the troubled soul, then 2046 is part of the proof.

But, just the same, it isn't healthy to remain in this state of mind. Drama is drama -- it's mostly self-created, and therefore it's better to put it in its proper perspective. 2046 runs on for a long time -- over two hours -- and it feels long because our man Wong meets so many women (in both his real and fictional lives) who come and go, always leaving him back in the same way we found him. One might say it churns a lot only to go nowhere, and that wouldn't be an unfair assessment, since there can actually be a lot of appeal to feeling lost, especially if you've experienced that romantic loneliness before. This put me in a difficult spot. I've recognized long ago that I actually have a fondness for the feeling, but I don't like to have it wear out its welcome. 2046 seemed, at several times, to begin to wear out its welcome -- and yet, I didn't want it to end.

(Released by Sony Pictures Classics and rated "R" for sexual content.)

Review also posted on www.windowtothemovies.com.