In The Mood For Love

( 6 )

Overview

For his first film since the 1997 Hong Kong handover, auteur filmmaker Wong Kar-wai directs this moody period drama about unrequited love that, like his earlier work, swoons with romantic melancholy. Set in a Shanghaiese enclave 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 ...
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Overview

For his first film since the 1997 Hong Kong handover, auteur filmmaker Wong Kar-wai directs this moody period drama about unrequited love that, like his earlier work, swoons with romantic melancholy. Set in a Shanghaiese enclave 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. In the Mood for Love, which was screened in competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, barely made it to the fest's final slot; Wong Kar-wai was reportedly shooting scenes in Cambodia a week prior to the festival.
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Editorial Reviews

All Movie Guide
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. In the Mood for Love ultimately provides a rare look at a director who is maturing as a cinematic storyteller.
Village Voice - J. Hoberman
Boldly mannered yet surprisingly delicate, In the Mood for Love is a wondrously perverse movie that not only evokes a lost moment in time but circles around an unrepresentable subject. Mood is the operative word.... Studied as it is, In the Mood for Love might have felt airless or static were it not for the oblique editing. Every artful contrivance is fuel for the fire, ashes of time scattered on the wind. "That era has passed" is the closing sentiment. "Nothing that belongs to it exists any more." Is In the Mood for Love Sirkian? Proustian? Can we speak of the Wongian? This 43-year-old writer-director is the most avant-garde of pop filmmakers (or vice versa).
New York Times - Elvis Mitchell
In the Mood for Love is probably the most breathtakingly gorgeous film of the year, dizzy with a nose-against-the-glass romantic spirit that has been missing from the cinema forever, a spirit found in F. Scott Fitzgerald, the best Roxy Music and minor-key romantic movies.... The pining here is so graceful that you may be transfixed by it. Instead of explicit physical tangles Mr. Wong eroticizes each movement of his camera, something not many others could do because no one can cut within a camera move the way he does... This film goes so far in the other direction that there's a fetishistic fixation on clothes; the beautiful floral-patterned silk dresses worn by Ms. Cheung have a sexual charge.

In the Mood for Love is probably the most breathtakingly gorgeous film of the year, dizzy with a nose-against-the-glass romantic spirit that has been missing from the cinema forever, a spirit found in F. Scott Fitzgerald, the best Roxy Music and minor-key romantic movies.... The pining here is so graceful that you may be transfixed by it. Instead of explicit physical tangles Mr. Wong eroticizes each movement of his camera, something not many others could do because no one can cut within a camera move the way he does... This film goes so far in the other direction that there's a fetishistic fixation on clothes; the beautiful floral-patterned silk dresses worn by Ms. Cheung have a sexual charge.
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Product Details

  • Release Date: 10/2/2001
  • UPC: 696306024439
  • Original Release: 2000

    • Rating:

  • Source: POLYGRAM USA VIDEO
  • Presentation: Subtitled
  • Format: VHS

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits
Tony Leung Chiu-Wai Chow Mo-wan
Maggie Cheung Su Li-zhen
Lai Chin Mister Ho
Rebecca Pan Mrs. Suen
Siu Ping-Lam Ah-Ping
Technical Credits
Wong Kar-Wai Director, Producer, Screenwriter
William Chang Editor, Production Designer
Christopher Doyle Cinematographer
Michael Galasso Score Composer
Mark Lee Cinematographer
Man Lim-chung Art Director
Shigeru Umebayashi Score Composer
Chan Ye-Cheng Executive Producer
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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 5
( 6 )
Rating Distribution

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(6)

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Sort by: Showing all of 6 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted October 1, 2010

    In the Mood For Love

    This is a wonderful movie. Visually, it has to be one of the greatest films I've seen. The music is beautiful, too. Some may think it slow or boring. Recommended for those who can endure long yet benefical films. Overall, exquiste and masterful.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted October 1, 2010

    In The Mood For Love...

    In the mood for love.... Yes, it was the mood Mr. Wong created in the movie that fascinates his audience. We can hardly find a movie like this anymore. This is one of the most sensual and beautiful and romantic movies I've ever seen!

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted October 1, 2010

    maybe not for Americans

    Mood, the professional reviewers wrote, and one said that it ''swoons with romantic melancholy''. But that is not really it. It is longing, and it is a longing that may not ever be satisfied. This film, when presented to a culture of complete self-permissiveness marketed-cum-conditioned as the ultimate mode of selfhood, may not stand up to the scrutinity of movie viewers expecting to see some delightful, charming and graying rich man win the heart of some middle-(maybe lower) class woman (since that must be the plot inherent to nearly every US movie with ''love'' in its title). Daft American bashing aside, it is worth watching at least once. I saw it in the theatre, and I still think about it occasionally, and suddenly, as I did with Mike Leigh's Naked, and Himatsuri. It's quite affecting.

    2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted October 31, 2010

    Masterpiece of the 21 Century

    This is simply one of the most delicate and sensual means of storytelling ever displayed. An intensely insatiable film full of photographic splendor. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle & art director William Chang were able to stockpile their collective brilliance into nothing less than spellbinding perfection and funnel it out one frame at a time. Such evocative measures help translate Wong Kar-wai's distinctive mood to a wonderful tale of nostalgia and recollection.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted October 1, 2010

    a nice film

    Tony acted very well in this film , but maybe it is slow , however this is a good , worthy film to watch .

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 30, 2010

    No text was provided for this review.

Sort by: Showing all of 6 Customer Reviews