The last section set up a new route for Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow to come together, and we are greeted with the familiar musical theme once more and the famous slow motion photography.

Except this time, we are not witnessing shots of people descending for noodles and making glances at one another, they are seen at desks working on copy. First it is Mr. Chow, smoke rising as he drafts a story. Next, Mrs. Chow is at her desk, reading and revising.

It ends with a shot of the two of them together, Mrs. Chow pointing out something in a galley that needed to be revised. Our familiar romance background has been transformed to collaborative creation.

This then sets up one of the most amusing vignettes of the film — the couple is working in Mrs. Chow’s room while the other inhabitants are out at a dinner event, but they all come home early, carrying a man who is clearly intoxicated.

So now Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chow are trapped. They can’t leave the room without making it obvious that they were in there together. So they create elaborate excuses to say trapped together in there for what seems like an absurd length of time — even calling in sick to hide their predicament.

As it turns out, even when they eventually find a window of time for Mr. Chan to escape for his room, they didn’t fool the landlady, she eventually caught on to what was happening.

All of which makes us wonder why everyone goes through these elaborate games to protect decorum when everyone gossips and finds out everything anyway.

But what makes this predicament ironic is that they weren’t caught doing anything more than collaborating on a shared hobby. What Wong Kar-Wai seems to be saying in the film is that, maybe, they were caught doing something even more intimate and revealing that having sex with each other.

They were kindling a joint passion, creating a shared brainchild. This is something very few people experience or could understand — and in that way may be the most radical form of affair.