In The Mood For Love

UK Release Date. 27 October 2000
Certification. PG 

Running Time. 1 hour 38 mins
Director. Kar-Wai Wong
Cast. Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung.
Rating. 80%

Review.

Beauty, as has been said so many times before, is in the eye of the beholder. Infinitely subjective, not everyone will agree on the label beautiful. But when I think of films with pure, clean, breathtaking visuals, I think of films such as Lawrence Of Arabia, Paris, Texas, The Big Blue, House Of The Flying Daggers, Melancholia, The Tree Of Life, Life Of Pi, Portrait Of A Lady On Fire and In The Mood For Love. 

Kar-Wai Wong's In The Mood For Love has to be one of the most aesthetically beautiful films in the history of cinema. The film is highly stylised and physically lush. The incandescent photography by Mark Lee Ping Bin and Christopher Doyle saturates the screen with vibrant colours, patterns and geometry. The use of colour, in particular, is masterful, and results in a dreamlike atmosphere throughout.

Equally, In The Mood For Love has to be one of the most emotionally agonising and affecting films I have ever watched. I can think of few films that have traced such a heart-wrenching arc of romantic longing since Max Ophüls' Letter From An Unknown Woman in 1948. Depth and poignancy are created through period details of the narrative's social milieu, which harks back to a morality that has long since disappeared in the modern age.

In The Mood For Love simply is sublime cinema. At times, it feels like you are watching a novel. 

Set in Hong Kong in the mid-1960s, In The Mood For Love tells the story of two neighbours who fall in love after they discover that their spouses are having an affair. As they struggle to come to terms with the betrayal, they develop an intense relationship of their own. But they vow never to be unfaithful to their respective partners. "For us to do the same thing," they agree, "would mean we are no better than they are."

Kar-Wai Wong astonishingly creates credible characters out of virtually nothing. The adroit performances of both lead actors capture every nuance of their characters' complex emotions. Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) is a stylish journalist - with slicked-back hair and hangdog face, seemingly permanently enveloped in a cigarette smoke cumulonimbus. Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) is a demure, figurine-like sculpture come to life, in a succession of figure-hugging floral, cheongsam dresses.

While essentially a very simple narrative and deliberately limited in scope, the plot is immensely clever, not least for what it leaves out. Director Kar-Wai Wong leaves the cheating couple offscreen. We see only the back of Su Li-zhen's husband and Chow Mo-wan's wife; their voices are only heard off-screen. Films about adultery are almost always about the adulterers. In The Mood For Love is different, the audience never sees the cheating spouses, just feels their impact.

Yet, Chow and Su's mutual attraction intensifies. Intimacy is created through what is implied, rather than shown. Chow hires a hotel room to work together on a martial arts novel, but not even an embrace or kiss is exchanged between them. Chow and Su will never relent on screen, because adultery is mundane, sordid and sadly, all too commonplace. Yet, Kar-Wai Wong ensues Chow and Su's relationship is wonderfully ambiguous. Is their moral code too strong? Do they simply choose not to take the relationship further or are they both waiting for the other to instigate the relationship? The reticence of both could be seen to elevate their love to some kind of noble perfection. What could have ended up as cold and melodramatic in the hands of a less talented director, Wong ensures is an agonising and heartbreaking tale of unspoken desire. 

This is a film so accomplished, polished and poised. Every shot is carefully crafted to convey the emotional depth of the characters. With limited perspective, the camera lurks in doorways, rain-soaked alleyways, cramped, narrow hallways and through windows. For much of the film, Wong adopts a voyeuristic approach, almost spying on Chow and Su as they seek solace in each other amid the paradoxical loneliness of a crowded city.

Only those readers who have seen In The Mood For Love will understand the pain in each and every single frame of the trailer. The pain of at last having met one's soulmate but at the wrong time. 

In The Mood For Love is a stunning piece of cinema that takes the audience on a journey of repressed desire. Yes, it is a film about love; but it is also a film about betrayal, loss, loneliness, regret, morality and missed opportunities - the list goes on. A profound and moving reflection on the fundamentals of life.

Never has popping out to get some noodles late at night seemed so glamorous, or so utterly tragic.