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| IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE. Starring - Tony Leung - Maggie Cheung - Rebecca Poon. Director - Wong Kar Wai. 2000. For the first time, it looks like Wong Kar-wai was shooting with a script. Of course he wasn't. But "In the Mood for Love," though not the greatest, is perhaps the most mature of all Wong Kar-wai movies to date. This time around, he needs only two characters to take the story off the ground, and he told it with a smart dose of subtlety. Yes, some of the ideas are recycled from his earlier works, and some of them don't even work, but "In the Mood in Love" is good enough to tell us Wong Kar-wai is still in top form. "In the Mood for Love" is not really about adultery, which usually turns me off, but more about missed opportunities. The time is the sixties, the place is Hong Kong. Mr. Chow (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) are new next door neighbors. They know each other, but only barely. We see them greet each other in the stairs, chat a little in the hallway, and borrow books from one another once in a while. You can sense that something might well happen between them, but as it turns out, their spouses have been making more progress. As Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan will find out one day, their spouses have started an affair in advance and run off to Japan. We never know how the spouses hook up with each other, though you can pick up the signs Wong left here and there. Details are completely lacking, in fact, Wong put his camera so cleverly we don't even know how the spouses look like. One of the strengths of the film, I think, is the way Wong shows us only the essentials. He chose to ignore completely the liaison between the spouses because the film is not about them anyway, but whom they left behind. Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan will eventually, of course, fall in love with each other, and in the most special way. Adultery may not be a big deal in the West back in the sixties, but in Hong Kong it could mean the end of your social life, or even your career. This explains Wong's subtle treatment of the relationship, and why the feelings of the two lovers always remain internal and concealed. Just as they find themselves walking down the same path as those who hurt them, they halt. Films like "In the Mood for Love" show us the universal truth about romance in cinema, that unrequited love is often the most intriguing of human emotions. Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan love each other, what keeps them apart are denial, hesitation, and, most importantly, fate -- it's a misfortune nothing happened to bring them closer. It is also amazing how in the film the romance materializes without the aid of any significant occurrences (to some this can be deadly). We never see them talk about anything other than the most mundane trivalities around them. Occasionally they talk about their unfaithful spouses, but almost never about themselves. Yet, once in a while, one of them will make a silent gesture in hopes that the other will respond. When that doesn't happen, they start all over again from square one, lost in another day of pointless conversations in the hallway. More lost opportunities ensue, more regrets. We have seen it before. The swordsman's lover in "Ashes of Time" regrets letting him go and marrying someone she doesn't love. The hitman and his partner in "Fallen Angels" know what the other thinks, but allow themselves to remain inaccessible even at the very end. Wong Kar-wai has always been obsessed with the idea of regrets and missed opportunities. In fact, in the conceptual level, there isn't much in "In the Mood for Love" that we haven't seen before, what made this film special are the better than ever visuals and what is perhaps the most streamlined plot Wong has come up with to date. They tell us how much Wong has matured over the years and how he has now become a master craftsman. The film is not without glitches. The major one being this "rehearsal" idea -- Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan have this weird habit about imitating each other's spouse and rehearsing what they plan to say to them. It just doesn't work. Call it comic relief, but I think many of the scenes are plain silly. The ending is also kind of weak, as we see the film drag on for another ten minutes after a scene that could have given the perfect conclusion to the relationship. Instead of letting the credits roll right there, Wong brings us from Hong Kong to Singpore and then Cambodia, spending only like five minutes on each place. The pace just isn't right, and it gives the feeling that Wong was rushing from one scene to another. Watching the film again on the Criterion DVD, I realized from the deleted scenes that Wong had actually removed quite a large portion of footage from this part of the film, which may explain why they look fragmented and incoherent. Actually, Wong has shot an alternate ending which I think is much much more satisfying than the one in the final cut. The performances by Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung are astonishing, as expected, and the fact that Leung fetched the Best Actor Award at Cannes gave this film the publicity it needed to secure its box office in Hong Kong. You see, Wong made his films in Hong Kong, but people in Hong Kong never accepted him. They think his films are boring, "incomprehensible," and "pretentious." What do they know, they don't know what they are missing. And while everyone still think Jackie Chan and John Woo are responsible for bringing the Hong Kong film industry to the international arena, I say it's Wong Kar-wai who made the most contribution, more than all those action directors combined. Hopefully, with the commercial success brought about by "In the Mood for Love," more and more people in Hong Kong will come to understand this gem they don't realize they have for the past decade. 7*******stars. © 2002 Geeky Marcus. NATURAL BORN VIEWERS. |
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