Director Wong Kar-Wai was shooting the ending and editing the film a little over a week before its debut at Cannes.
Filming was shifted from Beijing to Macau after Chinese authorities demanded to see the completed script. Director Wong Kar-Wai never used scripts.
Maggie Cheung wears a different cheongsam dress in each scene. There were 46 dresses in total, though not all made it to the final cut.
The original idea and inspiration for the film stemmed from a Japanese short story concerning two characters who often walk by each other in a stairwell, but do not converse. In that story the characters end up committing suicide.