Fusing elements from the European art film and American melodrama to create a new and profoundly influential mode of Asian cinema, Wong Kar-wai's intoxicating tale of unconsummated passion transforms a premise ideal for a sex comedy—two gorgeous people (Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung) in 1950s Hong Kong whose spouses are lovers deciding to undertake a tentative affair of their own—into a haunting, unfathomable mystery of quiet yearning and secret love.