Viewing Sinophone Cinema Through a French Theoretical Lens: Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love, 2046, and Deleuze's Cinema

Viewing Sinophone Cinema Through a French Theoretical Lens: Wong Kar-wat's ln the Mood For Love and 2046 and Deleuze's Cinema Flannery Wilson It is not an exaggeration . . . to state that Chinese film scholars in the West now have two choices: follow the Orientalist trend and perpetuate a myth that reduces China to rural China, to barren landscape, to exotic rituals, to male impotence or castration, to repressed female sexuality-in short, to allthat falls under "primitive passions;" or demystify Western fantasies . . . and redirect attention to other aspects of Chinese cinema. (Zhang 2O02:-112) Sinophone Cinema and the Asian Art-House Aesthetic It would be difficult to begin any discussion of Sinophone cinema without f irst brief ly touching on an issue that has been a concern to cultural theorists for more than two decades: should theoretical analysis and visual studies be focused on and geared toward local realities, global concerns, or both? The complex set of relations that exists in East Asia between local realities and the global context of those realities combine to create an obligatory new modus operandi for all Sinophone cinema film scholars. According Modern Chinese Literature and Culture . 141 to Shu-mei Shih (2007), Sinophone visual practices (films, artwork, and so forth) must be situated both locally and globally, because the distribution and reception of these visual art forms are carried out in a global capitalist context. ln her book Visuality and ldentity: Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific, Shih argues that like "the Francophone" and "the Anglophone," "the Sinophone" denotes a certain precarious and potentially problematic connection to the "mother-country." Shih is clearly opposed to what she views as the essentializing and constrictive practice of linking Sinophone studies to "Chinese culture" as such (Shih 2007: 4), even though the term, as a language- by its very nature, is inextricably linked to the "mother-country." "Sinophone," Shih (2007: 30) based term as opposed says, should be thought of to an ethnicity-based term; this notion should therefore be confined to certain immigrant communities throughout the world, as well as to other locations ou6ide of Mainland China such as Taiwan, Singapore, and British-ruled Hong Kong. Because the field of Sinophone visual studies transforms according to immigrant living conditions and is associated with certain places, Shih calls for a spatially and temporally specific modus operandi. ln their book Chrna on Screen: Cinema and Nation, Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar (2005: 15) argue, somewhat contrarily to 5hih, that all Chinese films, whether they are from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or the diaspora, and even if they are considered "transnational" in some respects, cannot be discussed without reference to a certain conception of "the national," a term that the authors rightly recognize as itself problematic. Local cinematic trends and patterns, such as Chinese realism, function within the framework of Chinese national identity. This type of realism is specifically characterized by melodramatic and romantic themes, and has been historically linked to Chinese modernity and nation building. Not untilthe late twentieth century has this traditional brand of realism been challenged and deconstructed by contem pora ry Ch i nese/Si no pho ne d i rectors (2005: 7 7). As Shih rightly notes, we should no longer assume that there must be 142 o Viewlng Sinophone Cinema such things as "purely Chinese cinema texts," in other words, films that can without reference to the Chinese diaspora or the overarching influence of Western cultures. On the other hand, we must heed Berry be analyzed and Farquhar's warning not to discredit completely the notion of national identity when discussing a particular cinematic text. lt is important to consider the motivation behind certain East Asian directors (e.9., Wong Karwai, Tsai Ming-Liang, Jia Zhangke) who create f ilms that are later exported and admired by Western, particularly European "art-house," audiences. Tsai Ming-liang especially, perhaps even more so than Wong Kar-wai, demonstrates his allegiance to French filmmakers in his film WhatTime 400 Blows (1959) throughout. Jia Zhangke's film ls tt Ihere? (Ni nabian jidian; 2001) by engaging with and "quoting" Truffaut's lhe World (Shijie; 2004) is centered on the image of the Eiffel Tower as it exists in miniaturized form in a Shanghaitheme park.1 Do these East Asian directors wish to inaugurate l This theme park is named "The World" because it contains miniatures of famous buildings and monuments from around the globe. themselves into Western culture, to somehow reach toward "high culture" through their conscious use of the "art-house" aesthetic? Or do they intentionally engage with so-called "Western influences" forthe purposes of distribution and marketing concerns-to appeal to consumer-oriented identities functioning within a global capitalist context? I contend that the artistic integrity of these directors tends to outweigh their desire to appeal to any particular audience, and that Wong Kar-wai cites and imitates the European art-house aesthetic only as a means to create his own cinematic niche within the Hong Kong art-house genre. James Udden (2006: 1) accounts for the international appeal of Wong Kar-wai's directorial style in his article "The Stubborn Persistence of the Local in Wong Kar-wai," arguing that Wong is somehow both borderless and stubbornly tied to his roots as a Hong Kong filmmaker. I propose that the inherent duality of Wong's films helps explain their mass popularity both within China and internationally, particularly among the transnational film festival circuit. His films are situated on a border space between East and West, grounded in national identity yet full of export potential. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture . 143 Through his use of intertextuality and citation of European pastiche, Wong simultaneously builds from and shatters Chinese realism as he creates his own form of neorealism-one that questions the high-low art form divide. Many of his films are filled with similar motifs that can be linked to the idea of Hong Kong as a postcolonial space: missed opportunities, alienation, anxiety, suspension, and the disjunction of time. A Case Study: Wong Kar-waiand Deleuze As I was working my way through Deleuze's Cinema books, I happened ,MFL3 Chinese title is Huayang nianhua, or literally "When Flowers Were in Full 8loom." Both /MFt and 2046 arc part of a loose trilogy by Wong that also includes the 1991 tilm Days of Being Wild. 'l to watch two of Wong Kar-wai's more recent films, /n the Mood for Love (Huayang nianhua, 2000; hereafter IMFL) and 2045 (2004)2; it struck me that it could be quite fruitful to analyze the Hong Kong cinema of Wong Kar-wai through the French theoretical framework of Gilles Deleuze. Both the French writer and the 5inophone f ilmmaker appear, at the outset, to have striking overlapping ideas and concerns-both welcome the birth of a new form of filmmaking, a kind of neorealism that calls into question our perception of time as linear and chronological-Deleuze in theory, Wong in practice. There is a substantial body of scholarship specifically geared toward elucidating, clarifying, and situating Deleuze's ontology of cinema within This includes D. N. Rodowick's book Gilles Deleuze's Time Machine (19971, Steven Shaviro's The Cinematic Body (1993), Patricia Pisters's The Matix of Visual Culture (2003), David Martin)ones's Deleuze, Cinema, and National 3 a broader theoretical context.3 The body of work dedicated specif ically to engaging Deleuze's theories with Sinophone or Asian cinemas, howeveri is small. Although Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli (2000-2001: 2) explore howWong Kar-wai, "a model example of the postmodern author," represents time in his oeuvre, ldentity: Nanative Time in National Contexts (2006), Anna Powell's Deleuze, Altercd States and Film (2OO7l, and lan Buchanan and Patricia MacCormack's their article does not include any close readings of Wong's f ilms in relation to Deleuzian notions of cinematic time. lnstead, they link Wong Kar-wai's aesthetics of time and space to "theorists edited volume Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Cinema (2O081. of the postmodern condition" (2000-2001: 2) such as Frederic Jameson, Jean-Frangois Lyotard, and Paul Virilio. Jean-Marc Lalanne et al.'s edited volume Wong Kar-wai presents detailed discussions of time, modernity, disappointment, and music in Wong's earlier films by an assortment of 144 . Viewing Sinophone Cinema authors, including Ackbar Abbas. Janice Tong's essay on Chungking Express directly links Deleuze's notion of the time-image to Wong's project in this film. Although Tong notes that Wong's directorial style seems to perfectly express the Deleuzian time-image (Tong 2003: 51), I believe there is much more to be said on this topic. My aim is to highlight and reflect on the specific links that can be found between Deleuze and Wong, particularly in IMFL and 2046. To accomplish this goal, I look mainly at IMFL (with a few scenes from to the theoretical issues that Deleuze raises about film in terms of movement, space, and time toward the end of Cinema l: The Movement-lmage and throughout Cinema 2: The Time-lmage. Deleuze 2046) in relation creates a new vocabulary to describe the phenomena he witnesses in various cinematic movements and in the oeuvres of certain well-known directors. It is apparent that Deleuze privileges what he calls the "time-image" over the potentially "less sophisticated" movement-image because the former from a crisis within "perception," "action," and "affection" images. As he explains in his glossary at the end of Cinema 1, these latter terms are adaptations of semiological concepts formulated by Charles Sanders arises usefulto keep in mind that although the movement-image can be divided into these three types of images, the time-image is not defined by such limits. Here are the rough definitions of these terms: (1) perception Peirce.a lt is 'Chades Sanders Peirce (183$1914): philosopher, logician, semiologist. images: a sort of "ground zero," what is initially seen or perceived, usually with long shots; (2) action images: in which space is actualized and "affects" are realized in "embodied modes of behavio;" usually associated with medium shots; and (3) affection images: deterritorialized images that focus on expressions of feeling, usually associated with the associated close-up.s Deleuze sees the movement-image as unable to be freed from representation or subjectivity because time or duration is always psychologically determined by events on the screen. He believes that because time will always be subordinate to movement within "the regime 5 Rodowick 1997: 57-58, I have given only very rough sketches of these terms, because they are not central to my argument. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture.l45 of movement-images," this type of cinema fails on a basic level; hence, the crisis of perception, action, and affection images (Trifonova 2004: 135). Deleuze's privileging of the time-image can be likened to Wong's tendency to favor the representation of bodily movements over dialogue in IMFL and 2046. Like Wong, Deleuze believes that as the cinematic narrative becomes less and less reliant on what is actually shown by the camera, as the framing becomes more subjective, and as plot devices begin to rely more heavily on the mental image, film viewing in general becomes a richer experience. ln IMFL, both Maggie Cheung's and Tony Leung's characters are role-playing even within the context of the film; their love story is never fully realized because they are constantly rehearsing for the next "act." of how Wong's films comment on the very nature of cinema itself. The idea that we, as viewers. can never be sure whether the action between the two protagonists is occurring in "real time" or is simply a rehearsal is reminiscent of Deleuze's idea that film-space cannot This is an example and should not ever be fully contained within the camera frame. Wong's unconventional use of slow motion, close-ups (particularly of hands), and musical refrains distinguishes his work from a more traditional style of filmmaking. As a result, by combining French New Wave and Neorealist techniques (techniques that David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson [1997: 30H09] have defined more generally as "narrative alternatives to classical filmmaking") with his own unique style of filmmaking, Wong reaches beyond the clich6s inherent in the movement-image toward a Deleuzian conception of the time-image. Deleuze's reformulation of film analysis into a new mode of viewing the world and less as a way of mapping the movement of images in time is no than remarkable. ln his Cinema books, Deleuze uses Bergson's concept of pure perception to redefine the idea of the simulacrum for his own philosophical purposes. For Deleuze, the simulacrum is not an impression or re-creation of life that is secondary or once removed from life; the 146 . Viewing Sinophone Cinema simulacrum rs life.6 He posits that nothing humans perceive in the world is 5 more than a subjective image. He furthermore posits that there is nothing particularly stable about objects in the world, and that humans stabilize the objects they perceive in order to make sense of them. When we think, we are maximizing the power of the virtual, because there are only simulations and no "proper images," as Claire Colebrook calls them (2006: 9). Perhaps I am simplifying Deleuze here in the intercst of comprehensibility, but this is his general line of thought as I have come to understand and anterpret it. It is easy to see how such a phenomenological view of the world might lend itself well to the study of film. The belief that technology is an invaluable tool for humans is by no means new but Deleuze views technology as positive for somewhat unconventional reasons. He does not think that a piece of technology such as the camera supplements humans, but rather that technology approaches the inhuman: if seeing is a form of technology, then the camera eye allows us access to an alternative way of seeing, time in its pure state, outside the taint of human perception. Consequently, Deleuze entirely rejects the idea that cinema for a certain is a manifestation of the human subject. He goes one step further and calls type of cinema, one that is powerful enough to shock the film viewer out of a lazy state of mind and toward a world in which human movement does not always map directly onto time. The powerful cinema of the time-image, as opposed to the cinema of the movement-image, which generally does not express more than linear movement, exemplifies this type of shock. What, then, is powerful cinema for Deleuze? ln the final chapter of Cinema 1, entitled "The Crisis of the Action-lmage," Deleuze asks directly: howcan cinema move beyond the movement-image, beyond the hackneyed formulas of prewar Hollywood, and toward a rebirth of the image that would do more than parody the old clich6s? According to Deleuze: The new image would . . . not be a bringing to completion of the cinema, but a mutation of it . . . the mental image had not to be content with weaving a set of relations, but had to form a new substance. lt had to become truly thought and thinking, even if it had to become "difficult" in order to do this. (1986: 215) Modern Chinese Literature and Culture . 147 to move in this direction, first withthe ltalian Neorealists in 1948, then withthe French NewWave in 1958, and finally with the Germans in 1958 (1985: 211). He also credits Hitchcock with being one of the first directors to endorse a move away from the Actor's Studio method and toward a more neutral style of acting in which the camera is responsible for a significant portion of the explaining. This, for Deleuze, is the essence of the mental image, defined in his glossary as a "pure optical and sound image which breaks the sensory-motor links, overwhelms relations and no longer lets itself be expressed in terms of movement, but opens directly on to time" (1985: 218). Deleuze gives the example of Rear Window (1954) to help demonstrate the term: we are not told through dialogue how Jimmy Stewart's character broke his leg but instead are shown photos of the racing car and a broken camera in his room. Because the French New Wave often uses similar camera techniques, Deleuze views the movement as "Hitchcocko-Marxian." As a cinematic trend, in other words, the French New Wave furthers the project He believes that cinema has already begun that Hitchcock started, yet branches out even more radically in its use of the mental image. For Deleuze, the mental image fits into the realm of powerful cinema because it allows the audience to envision spaces and temporalities that exist beyond the confines of the screen. Although his films draw stylistic elements from a multitude of experimental cinematic movements, Wong Kar-wai explicitly acknowledges the influence of the French New Wave on his work. ln an interview about IMF\Wong expresses this same idea of limiting the role of dialogue in order to explain the events that occur in the narrative. He claims that he did not want the actors to express themselves verbally, but instead through their bodies, and that this was one of the biggest challenges they faced while making the film. Wong also says that he wanted to place the audience in the position of one of the "neighbors," meaning that we are never supposed to see anything completely clearly; our vision is always slightly obscured, and the actors' movements are restricted by the space they 148 . Viewing Sinophone Cinema inhabit. "l think it's all about suspense," says Wong; "we learned it from BressonT you know, we can only see a close-up, we cannot see the whole thing. There is so much imagination outside the frame."8 This remark is reminiscent of Deleuze's comment about the notion of a new image that would be centered more on mental operations, what he calls "thought and thinking," over purely visual cues. 7 Rob€rt Bresson was a French film director who became well known during the New Wave movement. Bresson's befter known films include Pickpocket (19591, Au Hasad Balthazar (19661, and lancelot du Lac (19741. ! This interview, conducted by Michel from the beginning oI IMFL that Wong prefers to make his "director's hand more apparent"e to revise tradition, and to tell a story It is clear through inference and clues ratherthan by blatantly showing or telling. The spectator must pay close attention to the minor details in order to follow the course of events. lnterestingly, and somewhat paradoxically, Wong uses a piece of dialogue. language, to emphasize the importance of nonverbal Ciment and Hubert Niogr€t on May 21, during the Cannes Film Festival, is part of the bonus materiab on disc 2 of the Criterion DVD. ln later rcfercnces, I 20O1 rcfer to this as 'DVD 2002.' communication. At one point in the film, Maggie Cheung's character says to her boss: "you notice things if you pay attention." This comment can be understood on three levels: on the most basic level, she is talking about her tie; on a second level, she is acknowledging that her husband is having an affair; and on a third level, Wong is speaking to his audience boss's new 'Bordwell and Thompson (1997: tl{X) use this phrase to describe the unpolished yet innovative quality of Godard's Ereathless (1959), though I think their remark applies well to Wong's film in this case. through Cheung's character about the nature of film viewing. For Wong, a film text is interesting only when it challenges us and compels us to use our sensory perception. The setting for the film is itself representative of a colonized and hence Western-infused East: British Hong Kong in 1962, in a district composed mostly of 5hanghai exiles. The living conditions of these exiles reflect Wong's own identity as a member of the Chinese diaspora: he moved from Shanghai to Hong Kong with his family at the age of five. ln lMFL,Su Li-zhen, or Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung), and Zhou Mo-wan flony to be moving into an apartment building on the same with her husband and he with his wife. This is the first of many so-called "coincidences" that will occur throughout the film and that will eventually bring the two protagonists together. The opening scene has a claustrophobic feel to it: the actors are partially hidden behind objects or Leung) happen day, she Modern Chinese Literature and Culture o 149 obscured from view within the crowded, cramped space of the apartment building. The bodies of the moving men further disrupt the space as they continually misplace items and walk directly in between 5u and her landlady, Mrs. Suen, who are chatting in the hallway. As viewers, we find it difficult to orient ourselves in this chaotic situation. Not only are the boundaries between rooms and hallways barely distinguishable, but the layout of the area in general seems intentionally ambiguous; metonymic, perhaps, for Hong Kong as an ambiguous space itself. Furthermore, it quickly becomes obvious, as Olivia Khoo (2005: 237) points out, that Wong does not want us to see the faces of Mr. Chan and Mrs. Zhou (the husband and wife of the protagonists, 5u and Zhou); instead, we only catch glimpses of the backs of their heads and hear their voices. is lt not accidental that we never get a clear picture of the two protagonists with their spouses or of the spouses, who are having an affair, with each other. Khoo (2006: 239) goes on to suggest that Su and Zhou's relationship is meticulously planned out: "the contrived 'coincidences'and 'chance' meetings between Mo-wan and Li-zhen are a rehearsal for some belated reunion or meeting that cannot happen now, ot indeed within the frame of the film." Khoo's comment can be expanded upon by observing two things about the relationships that Wong sets up: the cheating spouses are never fully shown in any single shot of the f ilm, and yet we are aware that their affair is actually "occurring- within the overall frame of the f ilm; meanwhile, Su and Zhou constantly appear in shots togetheL but their affair is never realized within the overall frame of the film. Hence, these two sets of affairs do more than simply parallel or mirror one another; even more interestingly, they are inversely related within the greater context of the cinematic narrative. with Wong's general policy of refusing to spoon-feed his audience and important in terms of the depersonalization of these characters. Because certain basic pieces of These are intentional directorial choices, consistent visual information are omitted, such as the faces of the cheating spouses, 15O . Viewing Sinophone Cinema the viewer must conjure up. in a Deleuzian sense, his or her own mental image of them. Deleuze's (1985: 203) observation on Hitchcock applies to Wong: "He makes relation itself the object of an image." At the beginning of Cinema 2: The Time-tmage, Deleuze continues his discussion of what he conceives of as a move beyond the dated, pre-World War ll movement-image and toward a modern cinema of the time-image. ln broad terms, Deleuze believes that f ilm cannot work the same way after the war because the threat of nuclear annihilation has single-handedly deconstructed the sensory-motor model, that is, automatic recognition of "concrete" objects through perception.'0 The same binaries no longer work for the time-image as they did for the action image; the distinctions between the banal and the extreme, and the subjective and the objective become blurry. Hence, a new set of signs needs to be created to describe the purely optical and sound model that now takes over; Deleuze refers to these as "opsigns" and "sonsigns," respectively. As these new visual and auditory cues bombard our senses, and as the distinction between real and imaginary 'o See Powell 2OO7:23; and Trifonova 2004: 142. This thought is reminiscent of Theodor Adornot famous comment: "writing poetry after Aus<hwitz is barbaric," ln a similar way to Deleuze, Adorno believed that after such a manifestation of human suffering and tragedy, a new categorical imperative had to be created in order to speak about truth and meaning (http://plato.stanford. to discern, suddenly, it no longer matters if we are able to make th is d isti nction (Deleuze 1 989: 6-7). Deleuze descri bes this type of neorealism in the following way: "it is no longer a motor extension which becomes difficult is established, but rather a dreamlike connection through the intermediary of the liberated sense organs. lt is as if the action floats in the situation, rather than bringing it to a conclusion or strengthening it" (4). edu/ entries/adorno/). This Deleuzian idea of a floating or suspended action within a dreamlike context perfectly describes Wong's characteristic usage in /MFl of slow-motion sequences, in which the speed of the film is set in time to a musical refrain. These sequences exemplify Wong's move toward his own unique brand of neorealism, a new type of filmmaking that resonates strongly with Deleuze. The refrain, a waltz entitled ,,yumeji.s Theme, " was specifically tailored for the film by Japanese composer Shigeru 11The song is undoubtedly so named because it originally appeas on the soundtrack of Japanese independent filmmaker Seijun Suzuki's film Yumeji (1991). Umebayashi.ll Wong has said that he decided sequences because he wanted the entire film to use a waltz for these to conjure up the image of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture . 151 two people dancing (DVD 2002): the f irst time the as a foreshadowing ref rain occurs, it functions of 5u and Zhou's romance, and the sequence does, in fact, resemble a coordinated dance. Remarkably, the sequence is actually one long take in which the camera pans back and forth as 5u and Zhou though at the moment they are both "attached" to their respective spouses. The shot begins with a close-up of Su's hand cross each other's paths, as she carries a pack of cigarettes, her back to us as she walks through the doorway to the mahjong table. ln the next moment, Zhou's wife walks in (we see only her back); she then greets Su and sits down somewhere out of the frame. Next, Zhou gets up, and we see his face as he makes eye contact with Su and then exits through the same doorway; finally, the camera pans back again to show 5u nonchalantly touching her husband's back (fig. 1). Wong has said that he was inspired by Hitchcock'sVertigo (1958) when making this film (Teo 200 1: 6), and indeed this sequence evokes the scene Figure 1: 5u (Maggie Cheung) and Zhou (Tony Leung) "brush past each other's in Vertigo when Jimmy Stewart's character sees Kim Novak's character for the first time-Kim Novak sits at a table with her back to the camera, conversing with her husband, and when she finally turns around, both Jimmy 5tewart and the film viewer behold her face for the first time. Bernard Herrmann's score swells simultaneously with the fetishistic closeup of her profile, ln this moment we are the voyeurs; we are meant to fall bodies" while playing mahjong in Mrs. Suen's apartment. in love with her in the same moment Jimmy Stewart does. For Zhou and Su in IMFL, this is also the first time we really see him seeing he4 it is a similar moment of infatuation. ln this particular IMFL scene (and throughout the film as a whole), the musical score functions much as it does in Vertigo. ln Cinema 2, Deleuze comments: "there are perhaps three films which show how we inhabit time, how we move in it, in this form which carries us away, picks us up and enlarges us: Dovzhenko'sZvenigora, Hitchcock's Vertigo and Resnais'-/e t'aime je t'aime" (1989: 82). One might argue that in both Wong's film and Hitchcock's, these musical refrains fuse with deliberately slowed-down and prolonged images to create what Deleuze calls "crystal-images." Deleuze 152 . Viewing Sinophone Cinema explains his definition of this phenomenon: in simplified terms, when viewing a "crystal-image," time appears to split into both present and past, and as the present passes, the past preserves itself (1989: 81). D. N. Rodowick clarifies and expands on Deleuze's definition: these crystalline images "presuppose a special relationship between perception and memory" (997: 90), superimpose the actual onto the virtual, and vice versa. When we watch the mahjong scene in IMFL,we are carried away by the power of the image as it melds perfectly with the emotional music; the narrative freezes temporarily as this short moment in the lives of these characters appears to become etched in time. Our perception of the events as they are "presently" occurring (the actual) becomes inextricably entangled with our own memories of previous narrative events (the virtual); and the repetitious nature of these musical ref rains reinforces the fusion of perception and memory, actual and virtual, in these particular sequences. Suddenly, mundane events such as playing cards, entering and exiting through doorways, or grabbing a pack of cigarettes seem to take on an entirely new significance. The "crystal-image" is comparable to the famous madeleine scene in Proust's ln Search and past as memories resurface. Rey Chow argues that Wong's use of Lost lirne: when Marcel dips his madeleine into the blossom tea, time seems to split into present of bodily movements and slow motion in IMFL is a way to turn the everyday, ephemeral moment into something more dramatic. She mentions the way 5u and Zhou are constantly shown "brushing past each other's bodies" (cashen er guo) in a transitory motion, and how Wong borrows this technique from French New Wave directors of the 1950s: "[Wong] turns such movements into occasions for an alternative experience, that of defamiliarizing the nature of (repetitive, habitual) rrotion through a manipulation of its cinematic texture and of viewing time" (Chow 2OO2:647).ln other words, the slowmotion sequences in IMFL that are accompanied by "Yumeji's Theme" always mark a temporal fold in the progression of the overall narrative. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture.153 Though Chow does not explicitly mention Deleurt in this article, the idea that within the time-image the banal becomee :iignificant is pervasive throughoutthe beginning of Cinema 2 (Trifonova 2OO4:145). For Deleuze, the depiction of daily life in film allows pure optical and sound images, 12 Deleuze specifically mentions opsigns and sonsigns, to thrive.l2 Japanese director Yujishir Ozu as an example of someone who uses this idea in his films: life and nature is ordinary; it is man who creates chaos and the appearance of disorder (1989: 15). Another example of an everyday situation turned extraordinary is the scene at the diner in which 5u and Zhou realize that they both know about their spouses' affair. This time, a Spanish Nat King Cole song frames the scene; the song is a reference to Western pop culture of the time, and it surrounds the sequence with a nostalgic or sentimental aura. The camera pans from one side of the table to the other, from 5u's profile to Zhou's profile, as if to suggest that they are mirror images of one another. Zhou's hand nervously lights a cigarette while Su's hand nervously stirs her coffee. 5he looks down sadly as he asks her where she got her purse; he looks down sadly as she asks him where he got his tie. Each has the same ulterior motive for questioning the other: they both want to confirm their suspicions about their cheating spouses. The camera pans jerkily between them in a swift movement that anticipates the emotional climax, but we do not see their faces at the moment of revelation. What the camera does not show us here is just as important as what it does. Su's voice (the sonsign)-"1 thought I was the only one that knew"-corresponds with the visual image (the opsign)-smoke rising from Zhou's cigarette. This image combined with the return of the Nat King Cole song in the next shot signals the commencement of 5u and Zhou's love story. But when Su asks: "l wonder how it began?" in reference to the affair between their spouses, she is simultaneously foreshadowing the doomed nature of her own affair with Zhou. The shadow of the other couple, of them, will be a constant presence that hovers over 5u and Zhou to the point of suffocation. Many other film scholars, such as Stephen Teo, Ackbar Abbas (1997b: 55), and Peter Brunette (2005: 98), have commented on the ill-fated nature of this love story. Teo (2001: 2), for example, remarks: "The affair between 154 . Viewing Sinophone Cinema Cheung and Leung assumes an air of mystique touched by intuitions of fate and lost opportunity."13 I would add that this overall mysterious feeling of lost opportunity connects to Cheung's and Leung's subject positions in the 13 The article is from the online film ambivalent space of an ever modernizing yet still colonized Hong Kong. I article archive "Senses of Cinema" and is entitled "Wong Kar-wai's ln the Mood for loye: Like a Transfigured Ritual in Time." would also add to Teo's comment that the two protagonists seem to have little control over their own destiny because they are the constant victims of outside forces bearing down on them-for example, the absence yet omnipresence of their respective spouses, the need to hide f rom their nosy neighbors, the passage of time, and even the rainy weather. These are the factors that bind them to something beyond their control and make it impossible for their own love to bloom. Even though their spouses are always absent, the never-ending wondering and comparing (mainly by 5u) suggest their presence: "We can't be like them," "Who made the first move?" "How did it happen?" The mysterious spousal figures could be said to correspond, in terms of the f ilm frame, to Deleuze's concept of the out-of-f ield [hors-champ], which he develops in Cinema 1: "The out-of-field refers to what is neither seen nor understood, but is nevertheless perfectly present" (Deleuze 1986: 16). Deleuze cites Bresson as an example of a director who often uses sound to relay information that is never actually shown (1985: 15-16). I would f urther note that, like Bresson, Wong often prefers to deliver plot twists through a mixture of visual images and sound. We know, for instance, that Zhou's wife and Su's husband are alone together in Zhou's apartment because of a particular combination of opsign and sonsign: we see Su's sad expression as the door is slammed in her face, and in the very next moment we hear Mrs. Zhou say: " lt was your wife." We also know that the " invisible" couple together in Japan because we see Zhou tearing up a letter and we hear Su's voice: "l wonder what they are doing right now?" is Other important pieces of plot information remain squarely within the frame. The neighbors are a constant and very real presence, and they are certainly not shy about making nasty comments or involving themselves Modern Chinese Literature and Culture . 155 The image of clocks is one that appears over and over again in Wong's films. ln Days of Being Wild, for example, clocks loom menacingly on walls and register the passing minutes 1a of love affairs, in other people's business. The large clock in Su's office never allows us to forget that time is passing,ra and the rain always seems to fall when 5u and Zhou are outside together. ln the end, however, the impossibility of their relationship seems to be reduced to the fact that Su, perhaps for honor's sake, is unwilling to leave her husband. This is part of the overall to blame failed love entirely on unfavorable circumstances, when it is the human being who makes the decision to follow a path toward moral restraint. Perhaps this is also why Olivia Khoo fails to see the events in the narrative as a long series ambivalent nature of the f ilm: it is impossible of coincidences, but instead as an exercise in pure contrivance' lwould argue, in response, that it would be most accurate to view the failed love affair as a combination of coincidences, unfavorable circumstances, and the personal motivations behind the characters' decisions. Perhaps this ambivalence lies in a simple confusion of issues. One issue involves the personal motivations of the characters within the narrative frame, and a completely separate issue involves Wong's directorial intentions. Even if we cannot def initively say that the characters themselves "contrive" their own situation, there is no doubt that Wong actively contrives and composes the images that we see in order to balance the ones that lie in our imagination, outside the narrative frame. This allows him to achieve a certain desired effect-the kind Deleuze describes in his section on the "the second movement" in Cinema 2. Daniel Frampton summarizes this Deleuzian idea in his book Filmosophy. He explainsthat Deleuze derives his notion of the first movement from Eisenstein and Artaud: this is the notion that film images cause the spectator to experience "shock" that provokes thought. The second movement is more complex and involves a shift from thought back to the image. Whereas a very basic film sequence will lead to clear thought on the part of the spectator, a somewhat more irrational sequence will cause the filmgoer to think and receive (a less exact) idea, and the shock of this "new" idea will cause the filmgoer to go back to the images, re-experi- 156 . Viewing Sinophone Cinema ence them, and see within them a belief or interpretation caused the idea. (Frampton 2A06:54) that What must be added to Frampton's comment is that these so-called "irrational sequences" are forms of the time-image. Wong reaches toward these forms by playing with the emotions of his audience; he ,,shocks', us every now and then out of our preconceived notions of what is either occurring or not occurring within the f ilm narrative. Audrey yue (2003) posits that many scenes in IMFL are defined by the presence of these irrational or "denaturalizing" sequences and that Wong stretches out and emphasizes the artificiality of everyday activities, such as eating and walking, through his use of nondiegetic space. Yue defines this nondiegetic space as a ,,third 'border'space" (131), which allows the film to be situated in a sort of limbo between East and West; the Hong Kong that we are witnessing is a Hong Kong in transition.ls Not only does this idea resonate with Chow's notion 15 For this same idea of "third space," of "the ephemeral as significant," it also helps explain why Wong is keen on creating transitional, irrational, and at times "shocking" space in an effort to play with our expectations as transnational film viewers. One scene in which Wong plays with our expectations this way takes place in Zhou's new apartment, number 2045.16 This has rented is see other, similar writings by Yue (2005) in Asian Migrations: Sojourning, Displacement, Homecoming, and Other Travels. the apartment Zhou for himself in order to write his martial arts serials, or wuxia, representative of a so-called "lower" cultural art form for the masses. The prominent features of apartment 2046 are the blood-red walls and the blowing curtains. 5u sits on the left-hand side of the frame facing the camera; she is playing with her chopsticks in a bowl of rice, but not eating 16 This is the basis, of course, for the sequel by the same name, which I discuss further. anything. On the right-hand side and slightly cut off by the frame is the back of a man's head, the f ront of which, for the time being, remains unseen. 5u has a worried expression on her face as she asks the man whether he has a "no," he eventually admits to it, and she makes a pouting motion. For an instant we wonder: could this finally be the scene in which 5u confronts her husband about his affair? But in the very next shot, we see that the man is Zhou; Su is merely practicing her mistress. Although the man says Modern Chinese Literature and Culture o 157 reaction so that she will appear genuinely surprised and saddened when she actually conf ronts her husband. Zhou tells her that she must try it again, that she needs to act even more upset. This time when 5u gets her "standin husband" to admit to his affait she becomes truly upset and begins to cry. "l didn't know it would hurt so much," she says. Zhou comforts her by reminding her: "This is only a rehearsal. This isn't real." This scene works in many different ways, but it can be fruitfully is analyzed in terms of Deleuze's theory of the second movement in cinema. Wong is not so much attempting to fool his audience (the entire film based on uncertainty and optical tricks anyway) as he is attempting to us jolt into a cycle of thought. The process works in this way: (1) the filmgoer is presented with a partially obscured preliminary image. Only one of the characters is identifiable; this is the "inexact idea"; (2) the filmgoer develops his or her own understanding of what is occurring in the scene; (3) a "shock" occurs when the overall image is revealed and the filmgoer realizes that these events are not "real," even within the context of the Film theorist Stefan Sharff, author of The Elements of Cinema, uses the term "slow disclosure" to express the same type of cinematic structure. 17 film; and (4) the filmgoer must go back to the images and reevaluate his or her original interpretation of the events. ln a Deleuzian sense, then, the second movement from thought back to the image has taken place.'7 ln another similar scene, 5u and Zhou converse outside their apartment building. Zhou has recently confessed to falling in love with she Su, but because will not leave her husband, he has decided to move to Singapore. the camera shoots them from behind bars in an alleyway, we get the feeling that 5u and Zhou are figuratively imprisoned by the lack of options that are available to them. The dialogue confirms this feeling: "You'd better not see me again," she says. A subtle fade indicates that a few moments have passed, and then he says: "lwon't see you again." A Because close-up shot shows his hand breaking away from hers in slow motion; her hand anxiously creeps up her arm, and she clutches herself. ln the next shot, we see Su's face in close-up, reacting sadly on one side of the screen as Zhou's blurry figure departs into the distance on the other side. Are we 158 . Viewing Sinophone Cinema actually witnessing the f inal moments of their relationship? But then there is darkness (the opsign) as Su cries (the sonsign). She is hugging Zhou as he comforts her; indicating again that the earlier departure was not real. The image of their hands parting is repeated as if to suggest that this is the pivotal moment of the film, yet paradoxically the moment is not "really occurring" within the narrative; it is an inevitable event that looms in the future for 5u and Zhou, but it is an event that the film viewer will never truly witness ('tig. 2). ln these scenes, Wong is manlpulating time to create a self-referential metanarrative that calls into question our initial impressions and natural perceptions. Not only is Wong's narrative falsified on some level, it is also obscured and stretched out. The brief pockets of temporal distortion along with the musical refrains add to the film's overalleffect as a mood piece. Wong has himself admitted that even though the entire movie runs longer than ninety minutes, the actual storyline can be boiled down to thirty (DVD 2002). Deleuze sees this type of time modification as a klnd of falsification, but one that is positive, a form of "pure expression" that does not attempt to represent anything directly. This rejection of direct representation becomes the basis for a new type of narration that Deleuze describes as "a source of inspiration" (Deleuze 1989: 13'l ). This is Figure 2: Rehearsing for the inevitable, 5u (Maggie Cheung) sadly ponders the end of her relationship with Zhou. the essence of the time-image: metanarration that questions our a state natural perception and brings us back to of purity again through its denaturalizing process. Deleuze directly links his concept of the "crystalimage" to this new idea of the "powers of the false." To falsify narration to move one step beyond crystalline description (the melding of real and virtual) and toward a total annihilation of truth claims (1989: 131). Laura is Marks (1994: 260) argues that the creative application of the " powers of the false" by way of cinematic images has strong political implications, because as in this type of cinema "there is no single point that can be referred to real or true," and hence, "there can be no objective record of the past." Looking at Su and Zhou's relationship in IMFL in politicalterms, it becomes Modern Chinese Literature and Culture . 159 somehow emblematic of 5hu-mei 5hih's notion of the 5inophone. Because to the Chinese diaspora that inhabited British-ruled Hong Kong during the 1950s, I propose that Wong uses the "powers of the false" to shatter the totality of Chinese-centrism and to create a colorful 5u and Zhou belong and diverse cultural landscape. Although 5u and Zhou belong to a spatially and temporally defined moment in history, this particular moment resists easy classification, and hence history, recorded or codified. The political undertones of IMFL become particularlyapparenttoward for them, cannot be objectively the end of the film, as the cinematic themes reach beyond the scope of personal narratives. Along the same lines, Marks quotes Deleuze as saying: "'lf there were a modern political cinema, it would be on this basis: the people no longer exist, or not yet"' (1994: 261). This notion leads us to the section of Cinema 2 in which Deleuze adds a "third movement" to his theory on thought and cinema. one that could be said to exist simultaneously with the other two: "the identity of concept and image" (1989: 161). What does this third movement entail? One way to state it: Deleuze believes that because concepts contain or are associated with cinematographic images humankind's relation to the world. He then creates a name forthe indicator and vice versa, something of fundamental significance can be said about or identity of this relationship, the "action-thought." ln his own words: Action-thought simultaneously posits the unity of nature and man. . . . Cinema does not have the individual as its subject, nor a plot or history as its object; its object is nature, and its subject the masses, the individuation of mass and not that of a person. (1989:152) For Deleuze, there is something sublime or even divine contained in this notion of the action-thought and, for that matter, in the nature of effective cinema in general. The action-thought also relates back to the idea of the unhuman camera eye-a powerful technological apparatus with the capacity to record images that are free from the "taint" of the 160 . Viewing Sinophone Cinema singular subject. ln light of the themes that arise in the final scenes of tMFL, I argue that Wong views cinema in similar ontological terms. He would likely agree that cinema shou ld represent something greater than the lives of particu lar individuals; that it should move toward universality, touch the masses, and unite with nature. The concluding section of the film is separated from the love story by a titled screen that informs us matter-of-factly: ,,That era that belonged to it exists anymore.,,The film then turns to a moment in history, Charles de Gaulle's famous'l 965 visit to phnom Penh in Cambodia.ls The documentary footage that is inserted here along with the sound of a French-speaking reporter is noticeably out of place in relation to the rest of the f ilm. lt is as if wong wants to awaken us from the dreamlike state that we had been lulled into by nostalgia-laden images of Hong Kong and illusory romance. lt is in this moment that Wong directly points to an intersection between Eastern and Western history (though there are constant references to Western pop culture throughout the film). This is one of the reasons why I believe thattMFL is intended for a transnational audience (but especially for French and chinese audiences) and can be productively analyzed in terms of French theory.re The coda of the film transcends modern political issues such as strife is past. Nothing This event is famous because it was during this visit that de Gaulle made a speech calling for the United States to withdraw its troops from Vietnam. The speech caused negative sentiment in the United States because the war itself was partially rooted in French colonialism in 18 Southeast Asia. between nations, and returns our minds to an ancient past in which life was devoted to and controlled by divine powers. Zhou is at the ruins of Angkor Not to mention the fact that the film, identified by Olivia Khoo as "Hong Kong art cinema" (2005: 235), was intended for the international film festival circuit 1e (DVD 2002). Wat in Cambodia, re-creating the ancient custom of whispering a secret into a hole and then covering it with mud, where it will remain buried for alltime. A Buddhist monk watches from the temple stairs as Zhou attempts to rid himself once and for all of his secret love for su. The camera follows him as he walks through the ornate stone corridors, and another piece by Umebayashi Shigeru plays over the nondiegetic soundtrack. Su and Zhou,s love story has become mythologized and universalized, yet the entire affair well have all been a dream because nothing ever came of it. The Chinese title of the f ilm, translated literally as "When Flowers Were in Full might as Modern Chinese Literature and Culture.l61 Bloom," is ironic because the flowers died before they could bloom. As Rey Chow notes (2002: 6a9), Wong depicts human relationships as impermanent and ephemeral because he sees them as based on a series of performances and reiterations. lt is the natural world-all that lies outside human control-that Wong privileges. Chow comments on the concluding sequence of the film: "for Wong the ruins of an exotic land, ravaged for ages by the elements yet standing still erect in the midst of political turmoil, offer the final solace" (649). Following up on Chow's comment with more focused attention to imagery we notice that at a certain point during this sequence. the camera seems to move past Zhou into extended dolly shots of ceilings and exterior shots of the ruins with no one in the frame. These camera movements suggest a shift from man as earthly subject to man as object in a larger world, rising above narratives whose subjects are individuals, The idea that Wong wants the camera to document the ancient ruins as they exist in their natural state, outside the current sphere of human politics, resonates with Deleuze's argument that cinematographic images are superior to natural perception because they are capable of representing a prehuman state of the world Clrifonova 2004: D These scenes in 2045 arc highly reminiscent of Ridley Scotfs sci-fi classic Bladerunner (19821. to observe that Wong and Deleuze are both interested in hyper-representation-that is, the set of things that exist beyond mere representations of the human subject. Wong continues to flesh out his exploration of hyper-representation in 2046, his science fiction-tinged and highly ambitious follow-up to ,MF[. The film opens in a futuristic city landscape. The animated CGI images of skyscrapers and fast-moving subway tunnels suggest a location that is remote and impersonal. the epitome of globalization. We have traveled far from Angkor Wat, a site of ancient ruins and all that lies beyond the bustling humanity of city life, to a futuristic city that is the antithesis of natural beauty. We have now shifted from an ancient, spiritual state to a posthuman state; this new city is so artificial and mechanical that androids often substitute for humans.2o Yet Wong links 2M6to IMFL by beginning 138). ln any case, it seems reasonable 152. Viewing Sinophone Cinema the former where the latter left off: the male voiceover narrator speaks of unrequited lost love, an ill-fated affair that was clouded by doubt. The voiceover compares his lost love to the secret that one hides in a hole and then covers with mud so that it will never be discovered. Any viewer familiar with IMFL will instantly wonder: could this be the voice of Zhou, still lamenting the loss of 5u?21 But how could this be Zhou? The opening lines of the film are spoken not in Chinese but in Japanese, a fact that might not be immediately apparent to the untrained Western (or French) ear. And certainly, even if one is entirely familiar with the distinct cadence of the Japanese language, one still might wonder why a Chinese film would begin with a language ln the chapter on Wong Kar-wai in Hong Kong: Culturc and the Politics of 'z1 D isap pea ra nce, Ackbar Abbas (1 997a) specifically defines this phenomenonthe linking and repeating of characters in Wong's films-as "metonymic substitution." foreign even to the Chinese audience. As it turns out, Japanese plays an exceedingly important role in the film; it is the language of mystery and sensuality, existing only in a fantasy space on the outskirts of reality. As James Udden (2006: 1) points out, the Japanese voiceover is meant to disorient and alienate the viewer: 2045 is more a place than a time, yet it is a place without any particular spatial orientation or consistent points of reference. Expanding on Udden's point, it seems that Wong continues his trend here of opting for the Deleuzian "mental image,, over spoonfeeding: he gives us points of reference, but does not immediately allow the viewer to "connect the dots" into a coherent map. Although the Japanese voiceover clearly alludes to lMFL,lhe viewer cannot initially see or recognize the character who is speaking. We must wait for the central narrative to begin before this opening scene can become meaningful. ln fact, the male Japanese voice belongs to Tak, the fictional alter ego of Zhou, created by Zhou within his own story entitled "2046.,'Tak,s first speech (it is also the final speech of the film) seems to spring directly out of the mouth of Rod Serling of the Twi I ight Zone.. " Every passenger going to 2046 has the same intention. They want to recapture lost memories . . because nothing ever changes in 2045. Nobody really knows if that,s true, because nobody's ever come back. . . except me." This idea . of ,,capturing Modern Chinese Literature and Culture.163 This revised translation of the title A la recherche du temps perdu suggests more than iust passive " French "remembrance," but an active search to locate something that has slipped away; this connects to the Japanese man's search for his lost love in 2045. lost memories" immediately recalls Proust's ln Search of Lost Time-22 A Proustian account of memory might hold that meinories are retrieved through triggers or cues, which, in turn, put into focus the past events of one's life. Smell and taste lie within reach in the present, waiting to resurrect shadows of the past (Proust 2004:47). Although Wong's account of memory is similat it is even more radicalthan Proust's, partially because his depiction of space-time is much more fluid' Again, Deleuze's "crystal of time" (a.k.a. "crystal image") theory, developed in Cinema 2, is helpful to our analysis. Deleuze posits not only that during a cinematic time-crystal, time seems to stop and split into past and present, but furthermore that virtual images become real images in cinema by virtue of the fact that they are inherently related to the real, and vice versa; "ln fact, there is no virtual which does not become actual in relation to the actual, the latter becoming virtual through the same relation: it is a place and its obverse which are totally reversible" (1989: 69). The virtual and the real, in other words, rely on each other to function in a cinematic narrative. ln Wong's cinematic environment, time is split into past (the 1960s) and future QAaO; the past is established as the central narrative while the futuristic sequences constitute the mise-en-abyme, or story within a story. ln the film, time and space, future and past, become such unstable concepts that they are almost totally interchangeable' Through recurring title-screens, Wong shows us that it is arbitrary whether one hour, ten hours, or one hundred hours have gone by: the future/virtual functions by way of the pasVreal and vice versa. The arbitrary nature of time, and hence the crisis of narrative in Wong's films, is noted by Ackbar Abbas, who comments on Wong's ability to convey a "lived experience of the negative" in his films. Through his rejection of linear plots, Wong creates a "serial structure of repetition"; although the same characters constantly reappeal their stories have no happy conclusions, and their love relationships flounder (Abbas 1997b'41-55). Although 2046 hadnot yet been released atthe time Abbas wrote 164 . Viewing Sinophone Cinema this essay, I would expand his argument to include this film; this constantly lived and felt experience of negativity, disappointment, and strange loops of time is an apt way of describing the overall mood of 2045. Because other women constantly trigger the memory of Su Li-Zhen (Maggie Cheung) for Zhou (Tony Leung), Su remains an elusive ghost-figure throughoul 2046; time revolves in an infinite loop around the failed love story of IMFL.Zhou will not be able to f inish writing his own f ictional stories or wuxia as long as he remains a prisoner to his memories. Similarly, Wong cannot reach his own satisfying conclusion to his film as long as the memory of 5u continues to haunt the narrative. ln an interview about 2046, Wong has said: ln Mood, Maggie is a real person. ln 2046, Maggie is an image, a woman in his memory, which is very subjective . . . she is almost perfect . . . and he always compares the women he meets in his daily life with this image, which is very unfair because it's impossible . . . because she's the best . . . it's in his memory. And so he missed a lot of chances.23 'z3 ln an interuiew on the bonus materials of the 2005 DVD release. to this observation. On the most transparent level, Wong is talking about the bittersweet image of 5u that Zhou holds inside his head. On a more subconscious level, this remark could also refer to the There are levels idealized celluloid image of Maggie Cheung that seems to preoccupy Wong as a two director. Wong seems particularly obsessed with the taxicab scene from IMFL-the scene in which Su and Zhou grasp each other's hands anxiously, signifying the ephemeral quality of their relationship. ln 2046, this same scene is reincarnated not once but twice.2a The first time it occurs, Zhou is 2a ln fact, the taxicab scene originally with Bai Ling (a high-class prostitute made up to resemble Su) in the cab; the second time, it is a direct "quote" from IMFL, a f lashback of the actual Su and Zhou together in the back of the cab. These two scenes are visually separated from the rest of the film: Wong shoots them in black and white as occurs in Wong's earlier film Happy Together (19971but with two men; Ho (Leslie Cheung) sleeps on Lai's shoulder (Tony Leung) in the backseat. if to suggest that there is something untouchable and eternal about these moments. This is more than just a haunting memory in the life of Zhou; Wong has created a timeless scene that will exist forever within the Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. 16I archives of film, a scene no less powerfully enduring than Kim Novakls emerging as the ghostly reincarnation of Jimmy Stewart's lost love. Yet Wong is aware of the inherent dangers of living too long within of memories. One of the central messages of this that for Zhou to free himself once and for all from Su's image, he must come to the realization that 2046 is a fiction, that there is no such thing as a futuristic time-space in which nothing ever changes. To begin the healing process, Zhou must mentally remove himself from his fantasy world and continue his journey in the taxicab as a solo passenger (which a virtual fantasy world is film he indeed does in the final moments of the film). But Wong leaves us with an unsettling conclusion: the film's closing credits emerge over the same CG|-generated skyline that begins the film, giving the viewer the feeling that it is impossible to know whether Zhou has truly escaped from his past. It is even less clear where Zhou is headed, if not back toward this static future world of 20a5 (fig. 3). A flashback. notes Deleuze, serves as the marker toward a pathway of remembrance, a piece of the story that cannot be told without a divergence from linear chronology: "it is in the present that we make a memory. in Figure 3: Globalization taken to the extreme; the haunting skyline of 2046. 166 . Viewing Sinophone Cinema order to make use of it in the future when the present will be past" ('l 989: 52). Thus, a memory is more than just a simple voyage into the past; we attempt to create memories in the present so that they will serve us in the future, when even the present has become a memory. Flashbacks or "recollection-images" are filmic representations of a character's present memories, or in Deleuzian terminology, they are actualizations of the virtual (1989: 54). Although these ideas strongly resonate with the central theme of 2046, Deleuze's relatively straightforward notion of the f lashback becomes increasingly more complex when considered in relation to this particular film. Wong's distaste for narrative chronology forces the viewer to work hard in order to distinguish "recollection-images" from "present images," the "real" from the "virtual," and so forth, so much so that it may no longer make sense to refer to such distinctions within the context of the film. Wong Kar-wai: A Director in Limbo Deleuze and Wong complement each other well, but I would not go so far as to argue that Wong is necessarily indebted to Deleuze, or that somehow Wong's directorial style flawlessly reflects Deleuzian theory. Clearly, Wong did not intentionally design his scenes or compose his frames so that they could be described in terms of the Deleuzian time-image. Meanwhile, we do know for certain, as Wong himself has confirmed in several interviews, that his style is highly influenced by his European auteur predecessors, who include Bresson, Godard (both representatives of the French New Wave), Hitchcock, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Yet Wong is by no means trapped in the past, and as Jean-Marc Lalanne rightly points out, it is not a question of placing his work onto a linear or "Darwinian" mapping of film history (Lalanne 1997:13). To do so would be reductive, and f urthermore, we must be cautious not to praise Wong's work solely because of its close relation to the European art-cinema aesthetic. Wong's films are worthy of being studied regardless of whether they can be said to fit into a certain mould Modern Chinese Literature and Culture . 167 or whether they are "acceptable" to the European film festival elite. Why, then, is Wong Kar-wai worth studying? Perhaps he is somehow ahead of his time, ahead of his contemporaries. ln response to the question of why Wong Kar-wai seems to be so ahead of his contemporaries, Lalanne responds: Perhaps because his complex work in developing narrative is nothing in comparison with his experimentation with image, one forever short-circuiting the other. As complex and convoluted as his narrative devices are, the m6e-en-scene always wins out. (Lalanne 1997:13) ln other words, although Wong is meticulous in his construction of atypical plotlines, he is best when he experiments (he and his cinematographer Christopher Doyle) with shots, camera movements, set design, and costuming-everything that is part of the mise-en-scene. Wong combines images and music in such a way that the viewer is jolted into a new visual and auditory reality, a reality that could be described as hinging on the postmodern. This very idea-that cinematic images have the capacity to free us f rom our everyday human perceptions and cognitions-is the same idea that fascinates Deleuze, not to mention Bresson (Shaviro 1993: 30). Despite the complexity of his narrative devices and imagery, Wong's films contain universally recognized themes that are appealing to even the casual viewer: unfulf illed love affairs, missed opportunities, and the performative nature of human relationships. But these facts alone hardly account for the totality of Wong's transnational appeal as a filmmaker; there is an array of other crucial factors that deserve one final glance, especially from a "Sinophone" film studies perspective. ln line with my own argument, Audrey Yue (2003) contends that the Wong Kar-wai aesthetic, as a genre unto itself, defies the stereotypical perception of Hong Kong art-house cinema, and challenges the high versus low cult (martial-arts films) Wong's films 168 versus mass (Hollywood action films) divide. fit comfortably within the paradigm of pure "art-house . Viewing Sinophone Cinema cinema," remarks Yue, but when the prefix,,Hong Kong,,is added to the beginning of the phrase, the paradigm is disrupted. The term ,,Hong Kong" signifies a distinctive space, a postmodern and postcolonial land that remains perpetually in limbo-Abbas (1997a:1G) defines this limbo as the ddjd disparu (or that wh ich has "already disappeared,,). ln her discussion of IMFL, Yue adds: "Hong Kong exists in the film as a space of displacement,, (2003: 130) and, more generally, "as an effect of two forces, migration and modernity" (132). As mentioned in the beginning of this essay, Shu-mei Shih sees Hong Kong as part of the "Sinophone" because it is external to Mainland China. This is an important point to consider and leads us to the further question: should Wong be defined as a Sinophone film director? I propose that wong's films emerge predictably in the late twentieth/early twenty-first centuries as a direct result of the changing face of the chinese cinematic realist movement, as described by Berry and Farquhar.25 Because realism They note that until recent times, 'zs in chinese cinema no longer reinforces the state apparatus, it becomes a "mode of address on contemporary issues that nevertheless still deal with Chinese realism was often linked to modernity and nation building. Berry and Farquhar also characterize Chinese realism as romantic and melodramatic (2006:771. the national" (BerrylFarquhar 2006: 107). One of these contemporary issues is the ambivalent nature of Hong Kong-its identity as a liminal space. I would therefore argue that Wong is a 5inophone director as defined by Shih; his films should be spatially and temporally situated, while concurrently being discussed on a local and global level. There is one caveat: like Berry and Farquhar, I am not seeking to classify Sinophone cinema as onlythat cinema which arises outside the borders of Mainland china or in the chinese diaspora. wong's personal connections to shanghai should not be diminished (he was born there, after all), and his artistic endeavors as a Sinophone filmmaker cannot be tied solely to his Hong Kong identity. ln his Cinerna books, Deleuze seems to be calling for the very type of cinema that Wong produces, a cinema that exists in a liminal space like Hong Kong itself, the "third border space,, between East and West. It is in a similar border space that the cinema of the time-image thrives. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture . 169 Rodowick (1997 171 describes Deleuze's concept of the time-image as an abundance of infinite possibilities; it is: "a ceaseless opening of time-a space of becoming-where unforeseen and unpredictable events may occur." My f inal point of inquiry therefore, is one that cannot be answered within the conf ines of this essay, but is worth contemplating nevertheless: how can we use Wong Kar-wai to reconsider Deleuze? Wong and Deleuze complement each other on a variety of subtle levels, as we have seen' But they also complement each other on a much broader level: as long as filmmakers such as Wong retain the desire to create films that will appeal commercially to local and global audiences, Sinophone film studies will increasingly rely on an assortment of theoretical apparatuses. One of those possible apparatuses, out of an enormous body of other possible apparatuses, is that of Gilles Deleuze, a French critical theorist. Perhaps we should reconsider our use of Deleuze, by including more discussions of Asian cinemas alongside his theories, in addition to discussing his work alongside European cinema. At this point, only a small number of critics have attempted to map Deleuze onto Wong and vice versa, and even fewer of those have done so with an eye to close reading. This being said, by no means am I suggesting that Sinophone film scholars should feel they must adopt Deleuze's theories, or any other Western film theory for that matter, in order to analyze Wong Kar-wai's films in a meaningful way' have intended to show that it ls possible to apply this particular theory I to these particular films in a careful and deliberate way. perhaps because of overlapping thematic strands that exist between the two multilayered texts, but also, to some extent, because of a lucky coincidence. 17o . Viewing Sinophone Cinema Glossary wuxia cashen er guo HgmiJ Eti* Filmography 2046. Dir. Wong Kar-w ai EE A.. 2004. ln the Mood for Love (Hua yang nian hua ft|F+++l.Dir. Wong Kar-wai. 2000. What Time ls tt There? (Ni nabian jidian ,f/:rfl[i!/1,fi). Dir. Tsai Ming-liang *HEH.2oo1. 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