[...] it is this faculty of keeping secrets which, the heroine believes, sets man apart from animals. The ‘secret’ of Chow’s affair becomes a sort of metaphysical back story in 2046 which is evoked by the hole; but the hole raises a persisting enigma. As Chow muses later in his own monologue: ‘I once fell in love with a woman and wondered whether she loved me or not.’ Tak himself voices this same line in his own affair with Faye Wong’s character.