In The Mood For Love part 10

Film: In The Mood For Love
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai
Hong Kong (2000)
Romantic Drama/Melodrama
10 parts/95 mins

In Cantonese with English subtitles (default)
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(Rated PG by MPAA)

Synopsis (contains some spoilers):

Set in Hong Kong in 1962, the film centers on two young couples who rent adjacent rooms in a cramped and crowded tenement. Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) works as a secretary in an export company while her husband's job at a Japanese multinational keeps him away on extended business trips. Across the hall, Chow (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) works as a newspaper editor and is married to a woman who is also frequently out of town. Neither respective spouse is ever shown in full, instead they are shot from the back or obscured by walls and furniture. Li-zhen and Chow soon strike up a cordial -- if tenative -- friendship. Chow begins to suspect that his wife's long absences are not entirely business related when he stops in unannounced at her office to discover that she is not there. Later, a colleague tells him that he saw his wife with another man. The icing on the cake comes when Chow notices that Li-zhen's handbag is identical to his wife's while Li-zhen discovers that Chow is wearing a tie that she gave her husband; it doesn't take long for them to realize that their spouses are sleeping together. Drawn together by shame and anger, Chow and Li-zhen reveal nothing of their discoveries to their partners. While working through their guilt by imagining how their adulterous spouses first hooked up and rehearsing interrogations, the pair slowly fall in love in spite of their determination to uphold their end of their marital vows.

Review:

In the Mood for Love is a lushly romantic, intensely sensual film, even though the two principals rarely so much as hold hands onscreen. The leads are photographed to emphasize their movie star looks, and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Maggie Cheung each give the sort of performance in which a glance or gesture means more than much of the dialogue. Director Wong Kar-wai's use of color, music, and sound is simultaneously nostalgic and refreshingly original. The gorgeous photography pours color through each scene, making everything from Li-Zhen's extraordinary dresses to the drab hallways seem beautiful. One often thinks of great cinematography as being stunning scenery, but the canvas here is of alleys, stairways, cramped offices, and even more cramped apartments and is every bit as breathtaking, perhaps even more so because beauty has been found in the most unexpected of places.

Wong's use of tight shots and low lighting adds to the intimate atmosphere, as well as his reliance on a slow-moving camera that takes its time to absorb all that is going on, practically moving in sync with the music. Similarly, there is the continual presence of food. In scene after scene, the characters are either eating or preparing to eat, creating the feeling for the audience that they are peeking in on the characters' quieter, more personal moments. Throughout the film, what is unsaid is almost more important than what is actually said, and there is a sense that the film is a memory of one or both of the leads, looking back with regret at lost opportunities.
As always in Wong's films, movement is eroticised. But here, there's no rush, no dizzying climax to the movement. Instead, there is a more striking use of slow-motion images and of shots in which we see actors from behind as they move away from the camera's eye. In one emblematic shot, the camera hovers behind Maggie Cheung as she climbs the stairs to her apartment, her swaying hips sheathed in one of her many flowered cheongsams, her rice bucket dangling from her hand. The shot is repeated at least three times, each repetition accompanied by the same slow dissonant mazurka on the soundtrack. The music, the slo-mo, and the incongruity of the elegant dress and the clumsy rice bucket make the moment seem like a dream. The elusive, erotically charged, dreamlike quality of the film as a whole is heightened by the way shots are framed so that we always seem to be looking through doors or windows or down corridors to see the action, such as it is.

Category:

Film & Animation

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[simonwhiteboy]

fuckin solid film

[InsaneBillykane]

Feels bad man.

[raancthoenl]

watch 1:06 to 1:26, you can ignore the Shanghai woman yapping in the background. 20 seconds and the whole movie flashed across her face. Leung's acting pales compare to hers. How did he get Cannes' best actor award and not she?

[raancthoenl]

@lionessgirl88 you notice she only had a ring on her middle finger while in singapore, and she had a wedding ring thru out the first part of the movie.

[lionessgirl88]

@raancthoenl yeah that's what I am thinking too...

[raancthoenl]

@lionessgirl88 There is no reason to show a child unless it is his. They slept together after the cab ride back in part 8. She probably went to Singapore to tell him about his child.

[huskyjerk]

@lionessgirl88 Yes, I agree about her dresses.  I find her to be extremely sexy thru out the film, and it is how she looks in those dresses is what gives her nice sex appeal. Those figure-forming dresses, accented with heels, makes a lady very appealing to many of us gents.

[huskyjerk]

One of my very favorite movies. I love the tension between the two. I can feel it right along with them. There is also an alternative ending to this on YouTube. I wish I could find it.

[TheLocalcat]

@lionessgirl88 she didn't leave her horrible cheating husband for the hot Mr. Chow because she is stupid!

[lionessgirl88]

Li-Zhen's dresses are amazing!! I love that time when clothes were made to make women look sexy without showing much skin. Sad movie though. I really wish they got together in the end!

My question is - was the child that Li-Zhen had a few years later the love child of Mr. Chow's? And why did she never leave her husband for Chow if she was so unhappy?

[anushkaawesome]

really nice movie!

[pur3jelly]

@tomtude103 cry me a river