Yet, for all its elegance in re-creating the past and in capturing nostalgia, the idea of change over time is marked with an iron brand that makes the film somewhat cool and distant. The key in unlocking the secret that Tony Leung whispers into the hole in the wall lies, I believe, with the Maggie Cheung character. So Lai-chen is simply too uncertain of herself, overcome by anxiety and fear of gossip that she betrays not only Tony Leung’s Chow Mo-wan but herself. Fear of gossip is the overarching conceit that justifies the sense of repression hovering over the whole affair: it prevails not only in the home environment (necessitating her hiding inside Chow Mo-wan’s apartment when her landlady unexpectedly returns home, where she spends the whole night playing mahjong) but also in her workplace (her boss tries to keep his own affair with a mistress hidden, but Maggie is perceptive enough so that it becomes an open secret between them).