DIRECTOR: Wong Kar-WaiWong Kar-Wai’s "In the Mood for Love" is a bit of a departure for the director, a slow-moving, stately period piece set primarily in 1962 Hong Kong. The high-energy pace and rapid cuts that are usually Wai's calling cards are wholly absent here — it is as if he is channeling Bresson or Dreyer, with their somewhat distant, contemplative approaches to cinema. The silent opening credits inform us of the setting, as well as providing a series of Godard-esque intertitles, though Wai's are poetic, not didactic.
COUNTRY: Hong Kong
WRITER: Wong Kar-Wai
PRODUCER: Wong Kar-Wai
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Doyle, Pin Bing Lee
CAST: Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Siu Ping-Lam, Rebecca Pan
GENRE: Drama, romance
MISCELLANY: 98m; Cantonese with subtitles
"It is a restless moment. She has kept her head lowered ... to give him a chance to come closer. But he could not, for lack of courage. She turns and walks away."
With these evocative, yet somehow coldly clinical words, we are under way. The two leads, Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) and Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) "meet cute," to use a Hollywood cliche (though the terrain this film explores is far removed from that of the average Kate Hudson vehicle), when both find themselves moving into an apartment building on the same day. The scene is bustling chaos: Shoes and books are delivered to the wrong owners, movers drag bulky couches through narrow hallways while Chan and Chow attempt to squeeze by. At first, the duo are distant and formal with each other, exchanging tight smiles and making light, polite chitchat. Gradually, they discover their spouses are having an affair with one another. For most directors, this would be a cheap, lazy gimmick used to pile on the sobbing, overwrought melodrama, but the immensely sensitive, nuanced hand of Wai ensures this never becomes the case. Many of the film's ostensibly dramatic moments are presented in fragments or omitted completely, and even the scene in which Chan and Chow confirm to each other their knowledge of the affair is peppered with long, measured silences. "What are you getting at, exactly?" says Chan finally, to which Chow's only response is an inhalation of his cigarette. "I thought I was the only one who knew," she muses, and the scene ends.
There are echoes of "Brief Encounter" (1945) here, as both films present a couple, thrown together by happenstance, in love with one another but unable to act on their feelings, bound as they are by marriage and the disapproving eye of a more old-fashioned era. The difference, however, is that Lean's film gives us gushing romanticism set to a quivering Rachmaninoff soundtrack, while "In the Mood for Love" is cool and detached, accompanied by a handful of jazzy Nat King Cole numbers, repeated for hypnotic effect. Wai treats the secondary characters in the film with calculated dismissal, though their landlady, Mrs. Suen (Rebecca Pan) contributes the film's most telling observation, as she informs Chow and Chan on separate occasions that they are both "too polite." Polite they are, rigidly repressed in both style and garb. Chan's gorgeous dresses are form-fitting yet topped by stiff, high collars, her clothes glided over by an almost fetishistic fixated camera. Harkening again to Bresson, Chow's hands, and in them his ever-flickering gold lighter, are emphasized repeatedly. These leisurely, reflective shots help give the film its languid rhythm.
Their spouses are given pointedly abstract depictions, filmed through windows or from behind, obscuring their appearances. Wai never shows us either one of their faces — we are given a brief flash of hair, a pair of shoulders. They speak in flat, disembodied voices, uttering half-hearted excuses and blatant lies to Chan and Chow, casually carrying on their affair right under their noses. The performances of Leung and Chang are almost as understated as those of their significant others, though their delicate refinement perfectly suits the material. What makes "In the Mood for Love" so successful is its perfect fusion of visual panache and narrative minimalism. Some of the sweeping, elaborate camera movements would make Ophuls jealous, yet the film never finds itself bogged down by grandiose melodrama, as was Ophuls' occasional tendency.
Meticulous frame structure is also important, as, like Fassbinder and Sirk before him, Wai helps convey the psychological state of characters through visual composition. Chow's wife, in the rare scenes in which she appears, is filmed through peepholes, doors and other objects. We feel her emotional distance from her husband, her complete disassociation from the film's events. Wai also uses space to detach Chan's husband from the narrative, as our only tenuous connection to him is his voice, chilly and aloof. These subtle displays of their spouses' personal disconnection help garner audience sympathy for the two leads without reducing their unfaithful partners to one-dimensional cardboard monsters.
As if acknowledging the potentially precious, affected nature of the film's proceedings, Wai wisely includes the earthy, grinning Ah-Ping (Siu Ping-Lam), whorehouse aficionado and gleeful gambler, to occasionally lighten the self-consciously somber mood. "I'm not like you," says Chow to Ah-Ping, and it is a good thing he is not. We sense that Chow, under his cool, starched-collar surface, has an untapped reservoir of emotion, but there are only infrequent hints of the romantic yearnings that no doubt swirl wildly in his thoughts whenever Chan glides by. This emotional restraint on the part of Chow and Chan helps give their relationship heat, and infuses every interaction with an undercurrent of erotic desire, giving a charge to even the most banal of exchanges. Ah-Ping, on the other hand, holds back nothing, making his lustful urges towards Chan all too clear. He would make a far less fascinating lead, for he has no real interior life — everything is on the surface, in the open, laid out for all to see.
There is a wonderfully self-reflexive sequence in the film, in which it first appears that Chan is confronting her husband over his infidelity. The camera reveals to us, however, that it is actually Chow whom she is addressing — the two are rehearsing, engaging in a sort of dry run, so that Chan will be well prepared for the actual confrontation. The two argue over possible approaches and reactions, like Method actors going over an upcoming scene. It is a delightful moment, made more so by our voyeuristic complicity in their play-acting. What we had initially viewed as a major dramatic moment is merely a staged play, a dress rehearsal. The joke is on us, but it is a joke we can enjoy as well. "In the Mood for Love" is an appropriate title for the film, for it is mood itself that Wai gives us, impeccably composed and expressed.
— Theo Wulff
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