This is not a review. It is not, because I have never wanted to write a review about it. How can I, about this sprawling piece of art, that which manoeuvres through shadows, through its lights and those they illuminate? Them who stand by the liminal spaces between a past that went by and a future they can never reach, visualised in corridors with the stench of regret and a room with only one present. The room carrying traces of the one who left, the derelict mourning their loss, finding brief solace in those traces. 

I remember watching it, leg atop leg atop the table. Drinking in the hues and the bustle of a nosy neighbourhood. Isn’t it all too claustrophobic? By god, I didn’t know what hit me. Yumeji’s theme plays and one leaves, one enters. Manipulating space, claiming territory. The act of scooting over to let one pass, a humiliating act to most, becomes one of intimacy. Unseen to those around, but evident to those who matter. She jokes about the philandering ways of her boss, but she too has a copy of what the other woman has. She doesn’t know if he gets the idea from him, but it is an age-old one too, she couldn’t have possibly given him that. He, the other one, provides reassurance, he too has a copy. The camera pans from her to him, during this discovery of what is blatant to both, but one seeking a testament from the other. Separated by the bliss of ignorance, brought together by the burden of realisation.

They play out scenarios, the ones performed by those left alone in the passage of love that are usually a monologue. But they have a screen partner to test out their lines with. To chide them when they exaggerate, to project on their partners to, to test out how their loves lingered on at the end of their sentences, warranting a welcome. She plays with his tie, a gift shared by the other woman’s lovers, it’s farcical in a way. They both lose their stance, and abandon the mission to find the real sinner, the one who set things into motion. Then, this imitation turns into something else entirely, one doesn’t know if it’s an attempt to understand their partner better or turn into the object of affection of the other. I just want you to like me. I just wanted to hear your voice. 

You never see them, the culprits, they’re always hidden. Only the innocent ones are worthy to be seen on screen. You slowly realise this is a facade. They struggle to be seen, through windows, dingy hallways, musty curtains, rearview mirrors, and half-closed doors. Limited, packed up in boxes, in that teeming city of Hong Kong. She cries in the shower, we see her foggy outline. She dares not look at him in the face, she looks at that reflection, him writing away, the one on the wardrobe mirror. Forced into proximity in the guise of a martial arts novel and nosy neighbours, they struggle to pretend discomfort in the company of each other. 

He stands caught in the rain, an escape from the walk of shame. An act of gallantry, one which costs him a fever and an urge to taste sesame syrup. A potful of it waits for him, of an earthy liquid tinged with hesitant fondness. She likes getting noodles from the street across, alone. He likes smoking, in the company of none. They often play this to track. These chores that sustain them through the agony of abandonment, bond them, they start to do together. We’re in the same boat, we need to keep it afloat; now that the other two have jumped out.

We’ll get a space for us, just the two. For writing of course, and to avoid loose talk. A place unlike our living space, flooded with lush tones, flowing curtains and space. The luxury of space. We’ll never be like them, they say while they do the things lovers do. He looks at her narrating, through the dressing table mirror. She sways to the song her husband dedicates to her from across the sea, sitting on a stool and leaning on the other side of the wall that he leans, scraping a rice cooker. It’s the same spot, they never know it. It’s another space at which they intersect, oblivious to it.

The gossip turns true, gossip we never hear of but they surely do. It passes through those narrow alleys, from the mouth of the cook to the ears of the tenants. You realise you are never aware of the space between them when she authoritatively declares how she didn’t think he would fall in love with her. You never even knew that she perceived this. You start to think, how well do you know them? You thought you were privy to their life, but you slowly understand that you were just another nosy neighbour, piecing together their lives from peeks through frames. They rehearse their goodbyes, this time as themselves. Still, they break; they never were good actors. But the familiarity of their embrace as she weeps, the way his hand fits into hers and the tilt of her head against his chest, makes you wonder if they managed to fool you after all. 

Another ticket is a fallacy, a fallacy which leads one to another land and leaves one behind. Lipstick on a cigarette, a bogus phone call and a girl you left behind are never a good combination. They don’t intersect spaces anymore, they graze by each other. Time and space are cruel that way. The ruins of Phnom Penh look like a good place to bury your secrets. A perfect place, desolated and welcoming to forlorn lovers. He whispers about the great love of his life to a hollow and shuts it up with some grass and mud. It’s a proven process, one of great relief to those who bottle things up. But even that has a spectator; secrets are anything but what they are supposed to be.

I still think about them. Her cheongsams and his slicked-back hair. The way his cigarette smoke rises in the air and how her tiffin swings from her arms as she walks. Like a Peeping Tom, I obsess over their intimacy, hoping to catch something incriminating on each rewatch. 

I hope she looks at those years just as he does, through a dusty window pane, because that’s the way I see them too.  

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Nandana Sony is an engineering graduate and currently works in IT Consultancy. She is passionate about literature, films and writing.