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There's something intensely romantic about hotels, even rubbish ones. In fact, rubbish ones can be even better, at least in retrospect; like red wine, hotels tend to acquire a certain sleazy dignity when described as cheap.
The more might have happened in a hotel room, the more vestiges of past trauma its furnishings might retain (within the bounds of reasonable hygiene), the greater the appeal – hence the deathless mystique of shabby monuments to excess such as the Chelsea Hotel in New York City and the Chateau Marmont in LA.
Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 centres its dreamy kaleidoscope of sexual encounters and romantic disappointments upon the eponymous room, located in a suitably dilapidated hotel in 1960s Hong Kong. In his previous film, In The Mood For Love, another room 2046 provided a meeting place for married lovers Chow (Tony Leung) and Chan (Maggie Cheung). In this sequel-of-sorts, Chow finds a room with the same number in which to write, brood and seduce staggering-looking women. He also uses 2046 as a title for his futuristic sci-fi novel, in which it represents a place in time and space where nothing can change. The number thus acquires multiple meanings – especially as any reference to the hotel room or the book or the future realm in the book also operates as a reference to the film. (Indeed, the troubled and insanely protracted production history of 2046 lends an ironic gloss to lines like: "If someone wants to leave 2046, how long will it take?"). There's also a more concrete external meaning: the year 2046 will mark the 50th anniversary of Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese sovereignty, though what that has to do with a lot of stunning people swopping partners and smoking in slow motion is difficult to say.
It's not the first time that a film-maker has had fun with room numbers – at least, if you believe the internet conspiracy theorists. When making his film of Stephen King's The Shining, Stanley Kubrick altered the number of the haunted hotel room from 217 to 237. In doing so, he opened the door to all manner of speculation from folk who've seen the film far too many times. (Danny wears a shirt numbered 42, the sum of the numbers of room 237 when multiplied together – 42 is 21 doubled and 24 mirrored – The picture of Jack is dated July 4, 1921, and is one of 21 pictures on the corridor wall. The sum of the numbers in the date July 4, 1921 adds up to 24. Dates. Yes. Time to go on one, perhaps, my friend. Or at least out for a little walk.) Similar conjecture has arisen around the hotel rooms occupied by Neo (101) and Trinity (303) in The Matrix. ("10 = Fullness of law and responsibility and teaching, and 1 = Unity, primacy. 30 = blood of Christ, and 3 = division, perfection and completeness." Or, maybe: he's known as The One, and she's called Trinity, and it couldn't be more bleeding obvious!) No less ponderously, the room number in Alex Proyas's vaguely cultish 1997 sci-fi thriller Dark City – 614 – has been read as a reference to John 6:14, which refers to the coming of Jesus.
If movie geeks have a lot of time to ponder the hidden secrets of hotel rooms, so do film-makers. Hotel rooms are only too familiar to itinerant media folk; the likes of the Coen Brothers, Richard Linklater and Sofia Coppola knew their territory when they made their hotel-bound films Barton Fink, Tape and Lost in Translation.
But hotel rooms also provide an instant cast of characters, and the instant potential for incident. They're perfect settings for multi-story, multi-star ensemble movies, from Edmund Goulding's glorious Grand Hotel in 1932, to 1995's four-director mess Four Rooms, and Mike Figgis's operatically pretentious Hotel. David Lynch tried it too, in a little-seen 1993 TV mini-series entitled Hotel Room. Then there's the neat social allegory of the ill-paid picking up after the spoiled and pampered, which kickstarted sugary romance in Maid in Manhattan and grisly organ-trading shenanigans in Dirty Pretty Things. The hotel staff in Jim Jarmusch's delightful Mystery Train are on hand throughout, linking the film's various storylines like a comedic Greek chorus.
And finally, there's the simple matter of sex. The effort to keep an illicit check-in low-key is rendered agonisingly funny in The Graduate, while the hotel room as blessed haven from emotional responsibility is celebrated in Claire Denis's paean to the perfect one-night-stand, Vendredi Soir.
Which brings us back to 2046. Whatever its meaning (and believe me, you can watch more than once without being much the wiser), the appeal of its setting is clear. Hotel rooms are intensely private but wholly anonymous spaces, which witness honeymoons, suicide attempts, extra-marital assignations, solitary nights in, family holidays and decadent showbiz parties.
The most intense life experiences, compressed into limited space and limited time, before being cleared away in readiness for the next guest. Little wonder film-makers have always been drawn to hotel rooms: they're living cinema. With room service.
2046 is out now.
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