This is a beautifully filmed and finely crafted romance, set in early 60's Hong Kong. The story is a simple one, as two cordial neighbors discover that their often absent spouses may be seeing each other, so they become friends. Tony Leung won a Cannes award for Best Actor, Maggie Cheung should have. Ironically, the two would later play lovers and assassins in Zhang Yimou's Hero, in quite different parts. This is a slow moving but visually sumptuous feast, as each shot is saturated with deep, rich colors reminiscent of Vittorio Storaro's work for Bertolucci and Coppola. The Criterion dvd comes with over a half hour of deleted scenes, also well worth watching. Wong later filmed a sequel, 2046, which was the number on a hotel room in this film.