by Allan Fish
(Hong Kong/France 2000 97m) DVD1/2
Aka. Fa yeung nin wa
As though looking through a dusty window pane
p Wong Kar-Wai, Chan Ye Cheng, Jackie Pang d/w Wong Kar-Wai ph Christopher Doyle, Mark Li Ping-Bing ed William Chang m Michael Galasso, Shigeru Umebayashi art William Chang
Tony Leung (Chow Mo-wan), Maggie Cheung (Su-Lizhen, Mrs Chan), Lai Chen (Mr Ho), Rebecca Pan (Mrs Suen), Chan Man-lai (Mr Koo), Chin Tsi-Ang (Amah),
The second part of a very loose trilogy, In the Mood for Love was made a decade after Wong’s earlier Days of Being Wild, and sees Maggie Cheung recreate her role of Su-Lizhen, this time the story moving on from 1960 to 1962. It’s a challenging film, vastly different to its predecessor, and owing more to the intellectual romances of Alain Resnais from the turn of the sixties, which considering the period depicted was not at all coincidental. It’s rated the best film of the decade by those fellows at theyshootpictures.com, but it may be more accurate to rate it the last great film of the 1960s.
Chow Mo-wan is an editor for a local newspaper who moves into a tenement building with his wife. Literally minutes before, secretary Su-Lizhen moves into the block with her husband, and the two meet and start up a friendship. However, their mutual dissatisfaction at their spouses’ being away all the time becomes something more serious when they realise said spouses are having an affair with each other. Slowly but surely, Chow and Su fall in love themselves, but to avoid gossip, despite their affair remaining unconsummated, he goes away to Singapore and, later, to Cambodia, leaving them both with only their memories and the thoughts of what might have been.
Tony Rayns ccalled the film “Wong’s paean to the agony n’ ecstasy of buttoned-up emotions”, and even that most succinct of descriptions only touches the surface. It’s a film that demands – and deserves – repeated viewings, and rewards such investment multi-fold. One could write pages on the look of the film alone, with the gorgeous work of DP Christopher Doyle making perfect use of the deliberately dingy, dimly-lit sets of William Chang. You would not believe that such beauty could be gleamed from electric light bulbs in the rain. The first signs of attraction are fleeting; brush pasts in the corridor or on the stairs, eventually becoming full-on conversations in the streets and in little nooks and crannies. One of Wong’s masterstrokes is how he frames his two luckless lovers, often within a small part of the frame, shot as if through a gap in a wardrobe, a crack in a wall, or divers such apertures, giving the film not the expected sense of voyeurism but the cautiousness and fragile nature of their relationship. These meetings, none more so than those shot from inside a building opposite, viewing them through clearly symbolic bars, speak volumes about the agony of impossible love. Nor is it incidental that Cheung is often shot from behind, those delicious slow-mos of her moving away from the camera not the usual lustful lingers on feminine booty, but signifying the fact that her happiness, and that of Leung, is forever out of reach.
Then let us take Umebayashi’s haunting score, used on TV umpteen times since (most memorably in the BBC’s Beijing Olympics coverage), with its melancholy cello striking at our collective broken-hearts, their feelings for each other transcendental of the dark surroundings. Not forgetting the exemplary performances of its two stars, Leung and Cheung, who embody their parts to perfection, and that final wordless sequence at Angkor Wat, where the Resnais parallel becomes absolute, and the timeless wonder of the majesty of that complex manages to encapsulate, magnify and, conversely, dwarf the brief fleeting flicker of their love in the overall scheme of things. Their love reduced to the level of that single droplet of rain splashing into a puddle after a meeting in a downpour. When Chow says that “I can’t waste time wondering if I made mistakes”, it sums up the situation while knowing that he will still do so. Wong’s poem of a film is languorous, dreamy, fateful, melancholic and absolutely spellbinding.
Click on names for archives
Writers/Founders
Every time I see this film I find it better and better, even more deserving of that #1 spot of the best of the decade that some people in various sites (not only theyshootpicturesdonthey) are giving it.
I think this film trascends plot, it’s like a ballet, the use of slow motion and the vital importance of subtle movements, give it that kind of artistic level, specially when everything’s so subtle and nothing feels forced, this plays like a filmed stylized version of life and love.
2046 deserves a spot too, yet I don’t know if lower or higher, even if they’re completely distinct movies, they kind of get mixed and visually conform a cluster of greatness that you can’t forget.
This is easily, with “2046” and “Domino”, the most visually inventive movies of the decade, and I can’t think of any other movie that was such an arrest of my senses as these were.
“Domino” falls too into the category of movie that trascends plot because of its photography, camera work and edition; maybe that’s the reason I loved it, I didn’t pay attention to what was happening with the characters, I was paying attention to the color schemes and changes of pace.
Anyway, “In the Mood for Love” deserves everything and Yumeji`s Theme has been on my mind since the day I saw it for the first time.
Wong Kar Wai’s best film and definitely a film deserving of it’s title as the film of the century thus far (as many have donned it). Easily in the top ten, or even top five, for me. The films style and tone resembles the great European art house masterpieces of the 60s like Antonioni’s ‘L’Avventura’ (a comparison already made by Clark in his fantastic essay not too long ago) or Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour. While it differs from from the director’s previous, more kinetic and whimsical masterpieces like Chungking Express or Fallen Angels (probably the ones that introduced most westerners to Wai), it never lacks his and cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s beautiful imagery. Featuring brilliant performances from two of the greatest performers working in cinema today, it is easily one of the great works ever. It’s inclusion on this countdown also brings up one huge question that has to be brought up: “why is this the first Wong Kar Wai essay posted on the countdowns?” I’ll agree that it’s his masterpiece but I think, and hopefully I’m not alone here, but there are two or three more titles I would have liked to see represented in the 90s and 80s countdowns.
Great write-up for a great film, though I found Wong’s kinetic mid-90s masterpieces more to my taste and am sort of disappointed like the poster above me not to have seen those on the countdown. I need to see some Resnais, it seems.
this is definitely his best film of the decade, and arguably the finest work of his career (it’s a toss-up between this and “Happy Together” for me). what’s equally fascinating about this film is how it was put together, perhaps the best example of Wong Kar Wai’s masterful improvisation as a director/writer/collaborator. I believe I saw the making-of documentary on the Criterion dvd, and it’s amazing how the film turned out considering all the different experimentation that happened on the set.
Aye Anu, Jaime “1” and Ari. All great responses here by real fans of the film.
Allan greatly surprised me with this #36 placement.
Love that second paragraph, by the way, Jaime!
I expected this to be much higher, but reading Allan’s review it’s clear he adores the film. I’ve learned to really like when Allan places films like this so low as all it will do is highlight several unknown or forgotten films in there place.
Which is part of the reason for the countdowns, Jamie. All the top 30 odd are ***** films, the positioning varies according to mood at the time. It’s one of the reasons I won’t do a final post countdown for all films after finishing the countdown as the order would differ from when doing that decade. Everything’s in a state of flux, but the countdowns are true to when they were agreed upon.