Director: Wong Kar-wai
"From the very beginning I knew that I didn't want to make a film about an affair. That would be too boring, too predictable; and it would only have two possible endings..What interested me was the way people behave and relate to one each other in he circumstances shown in this story, the way they keep secrets and share secrets." Wong Kar-wai From Sight & Sound interview Aug,2000
In The Mood For Love is one long sustained romantically noirish mood piece that is amazing for a while but then wears thin when it becomes apparent that it’s little more than a well shot tale of unconsummated love.
It’s Hong Kong 1962 and a married man (Tony Leung) and a married woman (Maggie Cheung) have moved in next door to one another. Their spouses have left the country for an indefinite amount of time. They are left alone and--since they share a common space and a common bond--they begin to keep each other’s company.
Like many of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s films this one captures the ennui of everyday life, the lonely pain of unrequited love and the slow passage of time. And, very eloquently, the musical and visual motifs get repeated again and again until we get lost in a labyrinth of saturated melancholy.
This is a film that can be savored both visually and aurally. The two cinematographers Christopher Doyle and Mark Li Ping-bin brilliantly capture the Kodachromatic look of 1960’s photographs and they use light and color as well as any film I’ve ever seen. And the production design by William Chang is impeccable in recreating the time period. Especially the numerous colorful dresses worn by Maggie Cheung and the hothouse set decoration that at times looks like a noir style bachelor pad. Every scene has cigarette smoke wafting through the air and numerous scenes are infused with the feeling of dripping, warm evenings. Often the main characters get caught in the cascading tropical rains that thrash the streets. The hauntingly wistful cello music too by Mike Galasso equally invokes the romantic spirit of pent up desires
In The Mood For Love is all about rhythm and mood and at 97 minutes it is, unfortunately, about 30 minutes too long. At an hour it would be perfect. But it seems to really drag toward the end. Part of it may be because for the first hour it’s easy to get caught up in the beauty of the film, the nifty editing flow and the gorgeous music but after an hour it begins to feel a little like a swank TV commercial.
Soon the chic, artificiality begins to pervade every frame and the story becomes pretty obvious. The two characters have restrained passions for one another but we know they will never get together and because of this there is an air of desperation in their attempts to consummate an affair. No doubt this is Wong Kar-wai’s intention but at some point you either accept the film or reject it in spite of the style. Most art house audiences will accept it -- as well they should after all there are no movies being made like this anywhere in America.
In many quarters In The Mood For Love will be compared to the best works of Michaelangelo Antonioni or Alain Resnais and while that’s great praise there’s no doubt that, because of that, it will have a tough time crossing over to the mainstream audiences. I much prefer some of Wong Kar-wai’s other films such as Chungking Express or Fallen Angles; two films that are as visually stunning as this one but, to me, also offer involving stories and better character development.
- Matt Langdon
