We get so much information from birth, basically, so much information about the importance of beauty, what that looks like and what that means. It’s definitely connected with sexuality in that people who are beautiful get sex and get good sex and people who are not beautiful will never be loved, which is interesting because, even more than love, I think, it says that you get sex if you’re beautiful, but if your not beautiful you get nothing: no sex and definitely no love. I so don’t believe in that, but I ate so much of this for so long, you know. Just because we, intellectually, don’t believe all the crap that we are being fed and are actively trying to do something about it, it doesn’t mean that we don’t— that we are not prey to it as well. I have a lot of, historically, a lot of negative self-talk and I figured out a few months ago that I really want to have a baby and I do not want to be raising a child with me calling myself fat or calling myself stupid or saying I’ve never done anything good in my life or saying that I’m too old for whatever or anything like that, because kids pick that shit up directly, they absorb it immediately and I do not want to participate in that with my child. It will get enough bullshit from the rest of the world and so I’ve decided that, even though it’s been very hard to do so for myself, I need to cut that shit out and not say these things out loud as much as I can.
Strictly speaking, this film does have a voice-over; when Ngor has gone back to Lantau Island, Wah is reading the letter she left. In this letter, Ngor explained why she had to go so quickly, and told him she bough some new glasses. It seems she was telling trivial matters. However, Wong Kar Wai has encoded plenty of information in this plain scene, which not only deeply implied her feelings to Wah, but also prefigured their sequel. Therefore, this scene became a remarkable turning point for their relationship.
Ngor wrote: “I also bought a few more glasses. I know they’ll all get broken sooner or later, so I hid one of them. One day, when you need that glass, give me a call, and I’ll tell you where it’s hidden.” Here, “glass” signifies Wah’s “love (or relations)”, and “broken” corresponds to when, previously, he “broke up” with his girlfriend. Like a glass, his love relation is brittle, because his current status has not allowed him to keep a normal love life. […] Perhaps we can say Wah is pure-hearted like a transparent glass. But, after all, glass has a function as a container, and is not to be left unused. In a relationship, a pure heart is not enough. Ngor clearly knows Wah’s situation, so, at the same time she hid a glass in his house, she also hid her love ti him in her heart. And that’s Ngor’s way of telling her feelings - that if he needs love, she will be there.
It seems that Wah had the possibility to start a new life with Ngor, like million of other normal people, if he broke away from his current life. And Wah took the chance to change, after he met his ex-girlfriend by coincidence. […] at that moment, Wah must have remembered the woman who was waiting for him. Although he could not wait to be with Ngor, he still hesitated to express his feelings. “I just wanted to say… I found that glass” was Wah’s way to tell of his love.
The Cinema of Wong Kar Wai — Chinese and Western Culture Differences in Narrative Cinemas by Mengyang Cui
Time, to me, forever brings a loss of innocence. As you go through time, you are bound to look back with hindsight; you begin to reminisce about things that you dreamed about doing but didn’t get to do, you begin to wonder what would have happened on that particular day if you had taken a different turn on the road. You have no answer for sure, but you are distressed by the possible outcome of things you didn’t do. You cannot help but regret.
