In The Mood for Love

Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong, 2000, 98 minutes

Two icons of Hong-Kong cinema, Tony Leung (Happy Together, Hard Boiled) and Maggie Cheung (Days of Being Wild, Irma Vep), play neighbours drawn to one another after they discover their spouses are secretly having an affair, but refuse to succumb to the same feelings they quite clearly have for one another. The result is cinema's most emotionally charged and sensual non-love story.

The beautifully recreated crowded apartments and narrow rain-soaked streets of 1960s Hong Kong makes for a brilliantly enigmatic and claustrophobic setting for the two potential lovers to interact in. Wong's framing and use of space is, as always, stunning, as Tony and Maggie awkwardly brush past one another in corridors and attempt to hide their 'friendship' from their landlady. In one astonishingly subtle sequence Tony descends some steps to the plangent strings of Michael Galasso's intoxicating score and exits screen left. Several seconds pass as the camera lingers on the staircase, until Maggie suddenly appears from the same direction and we are left to wonder whether they spoke when they passed one another off-screen.

It's what's left unsaid that makes the film crackle with a barely suppressed sexual energy, and the romantic exuberance of Christopher Doyle's sumptuous cinematography is the perfect counterpoint to the characters' troubled emotional states. The voyeuristic camera glides through the cloistered environment, lingering on images so delicately textured that you can almost touch them. As a result shots of Tony Leung's cigarette smoke drifting slowly skywards as he sits alone, or of the two sheltering from the rain under the eave of a roof, attain a quite extraordinary erotic intensity. In the Mood for Love will seduce you and its memory will remain with you for years to come, like an unrequited love.

Review by Dean Bowman
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2006

One day, in 1962 Hong Kong, handsome Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and elegantly beautiful Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) unintentionally rent rooms in adjoining flats. Since their spouses are very busy, Chan's and Chow's forlorn paths often cross in the rainy streets of the neighbourhood, at the local noodle-restaurant and at their front doors.

Gradually they realise that their spouses are having an affair and begin a friendship, vowing to be "not like them". While trying to find out, how their spouses' affair initially began, and enacting how they would react if they were to be confronted with the truth, they become attracted to each other. But soon the neighbours begin to talk.

With In the Mood for Love, 1958-born Wong Kar-wai returns to the place of his childhood, where neighbours still knew and cared for each other but also were eager to gossip about anything going on. Indeed Christopher Doyle's camera follows the main characters as if it was spying on them: surveying behind windows and curtains, carefully moving through long corridors and waiting in ambush behind objects. Dialogue is often replaced by long and dazzling shots accompanied by lovely music - those of you used to Hollywood manufactured formulaic films be warned! - this is what makes the film particularly beautiful: the film wouldn't be the masterpiece it is! William Chang who has worked on all Wong Kar-Wai films so far also does a great job in costume and production design recreating 1962 Hong Kong apartments and offices - especially with Maggie Cheung's astonishing dresses. No wonder this film won the Prix du Technique (editing, cinematography and production design) in Cannes 2000.

Even if the story might seem quite far from your own experience, this film is worth watching for its cinematography, its production and costume design alone - and moreover it will put you in the mood for love (hopefully more successful)!

Review by Sarah Stark
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2001