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Join Telegram Channel20 years ago this more or less formal sequel to In the Mood For Love was an aesthetic shock. A slightly crazy meeting with the creator of his sumptuous photography.
Christopher Doyle with his appearance of an unkempt imp is a free spirit. And like all free spirits, he is sometimes difficult to follow. His word is light. This 72-year-old cinematographer, who left his native Australia to sail around the world, is famous for lighting the masterpieces of Wong Kar-wai Since Our wild years (1991) until 2046 (2004) which is re-released today in a sumptuous restored 4K copy.
2046 is a sort of dreamlike extension ofIn The Mood For Love from which it takes, in addition to its cast – the duo Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung – this golden suavity bathed in neon lighting, punctuated by a caressing staging…
This characteristic aesthetic is as much the signature of WKW as of Doyle, one of the rare ops directors whose name has spread beyond purely film-loving circles. He also worked with the cream of American auteur cinema: Gus van Sant (Psycho, Paranoid Park), M Night. Shyamalan (The Water Maiden) or even Jim Jarmusch (The Limits of Control)
Interview with Wong Kar-wai for In The Mood For Love
From an apartment in Shanghai, Christopher Doyle tinker with his computer as best he can so that his face appears during this somewhat lunar videoconference. More than a conversation, the thread of this interview is more like a happening where the mind escapes wherever it wants, where at its request, we listen to a song by Françoise Hardy in its entirety, How to say goodbyetrying to translate the words to him here and there.
“If 2046 had been a French film, it would have been initiated by Françoise Hardy and this song would be the best illustration of the depth of this story…“
Let us specify here that 2046 is an intimate fresco around a writer who since the end of the sixties has projected himself into a future and fantasized time (2046 therefore!) An opportunity for him to retrace the thread of his sentimental life.
To start the interview, we first asked him to close his eyes, to think about 2046 and to describe to us the image that immediately comes to mind.
“I see a black and white image. A couple in the cramped confines of a car. The camera slowly circles them. It's as simple as that and yet it's a perfect sequence, the most beautiful I've ever shot. 2046. It's more than a date, it's a metaphorical place…”
In his momentum, Doyle broadens the field of possibilities:
“Does paradise exist? No one came back to tell us. We must therefore be content with the metaphor, which is what Wong Kar-wai says here. The film is also extremely prophetic in its vision of Hong Kong. The future he describes is ours today. Everything is turned upside down, only love remains. We come back to this couple in the car in black and white. It represents eternity.
So he, the cinematographer of silky neon colors, would dream in black and white? Sibylline response.
“Great question! When we sleep, do we see things in color or in black and white? I don't know anything about it. All the people who return from this futuristic world of 2046 have the same fear, that their memories will be taken away from them. If the images fade then so does the color…”
Doyle abruptly returns to our present to stop all extrapolations:
“Well, I'm just a cameraman, right? Just an instrument of this journey that is the film or should I say, the painting. Wong Kar-wai is a painter. In the Mood for Love was very concrete. 2046 is its abstract side.“
We stay there. We only want to reconnect with this 2046 who asks more questions than he has answers to give. A prophetic gesture perhaps. Poetic certainly.
2046. By Wong kar-wai. With: Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Gong Li, Takuya Kimura, Zhang Ziyi, Maggie Cheung… Duration: 2h09. Released in 4K, from December 18.