(2004)
Directed by: Wong Kar Wai (The Hand, Steven Soderbergh (Equilibrium) and Michelangelo Antonioni (The Dangerous Thread of Things.
Written by: Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh, and Tonino Guerra, based on Antonioni's short-story collection Quel Bowling sul Tevere).
With: Chang Chen and Gong Li (The Hand), Robert Downey Jr., Alan Arkin and Ele Keats (Equilibrium), Christopher Buchholz, Regina Nemni and Luisa Ranieri (The Dangerous Thread of Things).
Like most anthologies, this thematically linked trio of shorts is a mixed bag. Wong Kar Wai's The Hand, set in '60s Shanghai, is a small gem of sublimated lust; Michelangelo Antonioni's The Dangerous Thread of Things, which unfolds in present-day Tuscany, examines erotic ennui; and Steven Soderbergh's Equilibrium, set in 1955 New York, is a larky trifle about obsession.
In The Hand, inexperienced tailor's apprentice Zhang (Chang) falls under the spell of high-class prostitute Miss Hua (Gong), who assures the shy, virginal dressmaker that until he's become intimately familiar with a woman's touch, he'll never excel at making women's clothes. Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle evoke the intensity of their fragile, mutually dependent relationship, which endures even as his fortunes rise and hers fall, through Zhang's sensual, fetishistic pleasure in handling the silks, sequins and elaborate netting of Hua's exquisite gowns.
In "Equilibrium, high-strung adman Nick Penrose (Downey Jr.) pours out his anxieties to psychiatrist Dr. Pearl (Arkin), who's more interested in looking out the window with ever-more high-powered sets of binoculars than in listening to the details of Nick's dream tryst with a nameless beauty (Keats). The segment is shot almost entirely in black-and-white, punctuated by glimpses of Nick's cool blue dreamscape.
Finally, three of Antonioni's short stories are combined into a single, elliptical tale, The Dangerous Thread of Things, about an alienated rich couple (Nemni and Buchholz, the son of Magnificent Seven actor Horst,), a bold, voluptuous beauty (Ranieri) and an isolated stretch of immaculate beach. So stilted and affected that it feels like a pitch-perfect parody of Antonioni's trademark mannerisms. It ends with the women doing a nude dance on the beach followed by a cool, enigmatic stare-down as the waves lap gently at the sand. This tripartite curiosity was conceived by producer Stephane Tchal Gadjieff after he worked with Antonioni (who was partly paralyzed and left speechless by a stroke in 1985) on 1995's Beyond the Clouds. Dangerous Thread was shot in 2001; the other two were made almost two years later, when Soderbergh stepped in after Pedro Almodovar dropped out of the project. The segments are connected by dreamy, animated erotic drawings by Lorenzo Mattotti, accompanied by Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso's dirgelike "Michelangelo Antonioni," and while none of the filmmakers offer strikingly new insights into the mysteries of love or sex, Wong's bittersweet segment is a subtle, haunting beauty.