Directed by Wong Kar-wai
Written by Wong Kar-wai
Starring Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Rebecca Pan, Lai Chen
Hong Kong/China, 2000
Rated PG (thematic elements, language)
THE MYSTERY OF THE PRESENT
Wong Kar-wai’s latest film, In the Mood for Love, may be a departure for the Hong Kong director because of its restrained style, but it still delves into the themes that gave his 1995 Fallen Angels its sentimentality. Perhaps I don’t have the right to talk about Wong’s oeuvre since those two films are all I’ve seen of his work, but he does seem to be a softie at heart. The latter was a bawdy visualization of modern city angst, but it ended up being mellow and optimistic. In the Mood for Love takes all that romanticism and puts it into sumptuous images of 1962 Hong Kong that match the feeling of romantic longing, but the tone here is miserable and brooding. It is not a whirlwind of moving pictures- it is a slow, smoldering succession of them- and that allows Wong to explore moods and atmospheres in nuance, like a novelist. The film revolves around the ambiguous relationship between two neighbors, Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) and Mr. Chow (Tony Leung), whose spouses are having an affair and who, after realizing they’ve both been cheated on, end up falling in love with each other. While Fallen Angels showed the difficulty of finding love in the hustle and bustle of the city, this film is about the fear of consummating it in a more restrictive society.
I don’t think this new film is entirely successful. With Fallen Angels, Wong was a musician creating something rhythmic and cohesive. In the Mood for Love is a disarray of heartbreaking ideas and breathtaking shots; the rhythm is completely off and the ending, which jumps across several times and places, is much too concrete to jive with the preceding moody abstract poetry. The repetition of a number of Nat King Cole songs is an affective tool until it becomes mind-numbingly overused. As in Wong’s previous movie, which was a gritty, stylized film noir, part of the focus is on cinema itself as a medium that manipulates the senses. Here, the joy Wong and his remarkable cinematographers Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin take in painting with light and playing with framing gives the audience something to relish, but it leads the director to linger too long on certain frames. The film exhibits the power one single movie frame can radiate, but this indulgence becomes overbearing and interrupts the flow of what is also supposed to be an evocation of emotions. William Chang’s editing fails to connect these enigmatic pieces to form a whole; they remain scattered. However, because of the passionate photography, we get a number of priceless, haunting shots, among them one of curling cigarette smoke; another one set in the empty, echoing Cambodian hills that hold the secrets of many men. There are several scenes located in the cramped flat in which Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow live side-by-side, and they have an anxious, claustrophobic quality to them. The editing only serves to elegantly disorient us even further with Wong’s indifference towards real time.
In the Mood for Love forces us to infer its inclement emotions and situations for ourselves because its characters are as guarded as everyday human beings. Wong expects us to glean all the information we need from his series of simple scenes, but the mystery of the film keeps it alive, is its heart. Wong is all about capturing the sexiness of suffering, and here we have the lovely Maggie Cheung in oppressive, hugging costumes and the handsome Tony Leung smoking and pondering, both of whom deliver splendidly chilly and desperate performances. Their characters are responsible adults who would never start up an affair unless they were wronged. Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan express love and sexuality in the film by discussing their unfaithful spouses. Their mating rituals move in circles as they manage to leave moments ripe with the opportunity for sex without ever having committed any technical wrong-doing. There are a couple of particularly unforgettable scenes in which the two rehearse dramatic moments they could never act out in real life: Mrs. Chan pretends she is confronting her husband about his affair (at the beginning of the scene, Wong sets up the camera so that we are deceived into believing she is talking to her husband), and both of them act out their final farewell to each other. They burst into tears because they have invested all their repressed, unused emotions in the illusions. Suffering is better than the feeling of emptiness, and suffering together is their expression of their love.
This is the first movie I’ve seen in a long time that actually views sex as the rightful consummation of love, and it follows the relationship of two people who are obviously in love (albeit a kind of love that seems to be rooted in self-pity and regret) but would never dream of committing adultery. Their repression may be encouraged by their surroundings, but it is mainly self-imposed. If they could hear Michael Galasso’s recurring string theme, which oozes romantic ache, it would probably push them over the edge. When we feel sympathy for them and want them to hop into bed together, we surprise ourselves by advocating infidelity. The real philanderers are nowhere to be seen in the movie; Wong is not interested in sin but in righteousness, and how the virtue of loyalty in marriage sometimes becomes an obstacle for the virtue of being able to love. In the Mood for Love indirectly poses these complex questions about marriage, love, sexuality, and morality through its vague images; the plot has been hollowed out and what is left is the everyday gestures that only suggest the bigger picture, but can never plainly divulge the secrets.
By Andrew Chan [MAY 20, 2001]