Tony Leung Wong Kar Wai -

Even their "failure" is fascinating. 2046 (2004), the spiritual sequel to In the Mood for Love , took five years to shoot. Leung plays Chow again, but now hollowed into a sci-fi writer who beds every woman except the one he’s chasing. Critics called it self-indulgent. But watch Leung: his smile now has a drawbridge that never lowers. He’s playing a man who has memorized his own heartbreak and recites it like a lullaby. It’s the masterpiece of a man tired of his own sorrow.

Here’s a feature-style piece on Tony Leung’s collaboration with Wong Kar-wai: The Face of Longing: Tony Leung and Wong Kar-wai’s Cinema of Unspoken Desire tony leung wong kar wai

But it was Chungking Express (1994) that gave Leung his first full Wong canvas. As Cop 663, he talked to a soap bar, a wet shirt, and a stuffed toy — not for laughs, but with the tenderness of someone who’s forgotten how to touch another human. Wong let Leung be ordinary: a man buying chef’s salad for a flight attendant who left him. In Leung’s hands, waiting became a performance art. When he finally smiles at the new waitress (Faye Wong), it feels like dawn after a decade of night. Even their "failure" is fascinating