In the Mood for Love (2000)

Beautiful film set in 1962 Hong Kong about a man (Mr. Chow) and woman (Mrs. Chan) who become close friends when they suspect their spouses are having an affair. Stylistically, the film is also beautiful. Wong Kar-Wai uses a lot of slow motion and close-ups on parts of the body (feet, hands, waist). The film itself has a reticence and properness that suggests its time period. It's sexy without showing everything. Wong Kar-Wai also doesn't allow the audience to see what the spouses look like, suggesting that Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan should be together. Smoking is even made to look elegant with close-ups of the curls of smoke. A really lovely film. Just prepare yourself for the ending.

Fmovies: The most attractive factor that lies in this masterpiece of a film is not the beautiful lead actors. It isn't their outstanding acting and sizzling chemistry either.

To me, it is the mis-en-scene of the entire movie. The settings, the lighting, the props... all add to the mood for love between the main characters. A whiff of smoke from Chow's cigarette tells us his state of mind, the ever-changing tight-fitting cheongsams of Lizhen reflects the constraints of decision-making, the ruins of Angkor Wat ties in with the deteriorating relationship of the two leads.

The excellent use of mis-en-scene gives the film just the right amount of feel needed to flesh out the complicated nature of the characters' relationship. The film leaves the audience fruitlessly yearning for more.

Two people living in the same flat complex find their partners are having an affair with each other. As they try and piece together how it happened, they also embark on an emotional journey that aches for a resolutionÂ…

Building on his previous success with Happy Together and Chungking Express, Wong Kar Wai gives us this rather old fashioned and marvellous story of reawakened passions, yearning and unrequited love.

Possibly, In the Mood for Love is not to everyone's taste. It wanders in rather lazily at 98mins: not particularly long for a film, but it appears longer because not a lot really happens. But this lazy feel conceals a quite tightly constructed film. Most of the story is cunningly woven around a series of set piece role plays, where the characters act out presumed scenarios between their respective spouses, trying to work out how the affair started. I say cunning because, of course, this makes it difficult for the audience (and the characters) to tell what is "in-role" and what is genuine.

If all this sounds rather arty and self-conscience, that's because it is. Unashamedly so. And it is played to perfection by two of Hong Kong's finest, Maggie Cheung and Leung Chui Wai, with some excellent support from Ping Lam Siu and Rebecca Pan.

It is also a virtuoso performance by Wong Kar Wai, who treats the audience to a sensory, and sensual, overload. Bringing together Christopher Doyle (who later deployed his lush, over-ripe style on Hero) and Pin Bing Lee (whose beautifully understated style can be seen on Springtime in a Small Town) was cinematographic genius. It has all the bold beauty of Doyle, without, frankly, the Athena-poster cheesiness of his work on Hero. The music, as always with Wong, is prominent. From Nat King Cole singing in Spanish, to the haunting strings of the main theme, it perfectly matches the eclectic beauty of the images.

All in all a top film, whether judged on plot, acting, cinematography or soundtrack. Similar to, but more accessible than, Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, this is a beautiful, old fashioned story about love lost and regained.

And watch out for Tony Leung's hotel room 2046, which presaged Wong's recent film of the same name.

In the Mood for Love fmovies. I was recommended this film as one of the best love stories ever told. And as I am huge fan of love, I bought the tickets and sat myself in the theatre. After 90 minutes I left the theatre with nothing but disappointment and the theme song as the only positive thing of the film. I was appalled at the story itself, that two people can love each other but be so afraid as to never act it. I just couldn't go passed the language barrier and the cultural barrier. The second time I ran into it... I was in a different mood, no longer had any expectation ... and had more patience, more relaxed mind to "see" the film... and as soon as I opened my eyes, I discovered the love... the beauty of the film. I went beyond the language and the love story and saw the acting (not even for a moment did I ever felt like they were acting!) and the cinematography. The first time I heard a definition of what a film is, I was told that it should be a chain of perfectly balanced photographs (shots) and this is the film to match the description. Almost every shot has an idea behind it, and combined with the music... and the light effects... the result is just a masterpiece! And a masterpiece is just something that you must have in your collection of films.

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE - will make you fall in love with Wong Kar Wai, especially, if this is his first film that you are watching. My thoughts on this sumptuously crafted and subtly woven film can end here for certainly that is the summary of it all. But there is a lot more to talk about the film.

(But before that - in a city like Bhubaneswar there aren't any public avenues to watch World Cinema. Certainly the larger demographic is oblivious to what World Cinema is. To most here Hollywood represents World Cinema and what could have been more disturbing than this? One can argue in favor of Netflix and Amazon Prime, but watching a thought provoking film in a big screen along with other curious mind(s) is an experience that no argument can counter. In such a scenario the Film Society of Bhubaneswar is the only savior. They screened Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love along with Days of Being Wild as part of their June screening. I experienced Wai for the first time with "In the Mood for Love".)

One would instantly notice the detailing that has been maintained in every scene throughout the film. The slow panning has been interestingly used to bring the subject into frame, rather the frame onto the subject, thereby driving your empathy gradually towards the predicament the subjects are in. The other thing that has also been very uniquely used throughout is the screenplay from behind veils, translucent curtains, through gaps found in the back of chairs and such. It always gave into a mystery and mystic feeling about the characters who are in focus yet out of focus - signifying a lot about the many confusions that cluttered their minds: emotions and the natural urge versus the high moral standards they want to uphold to.

The film's main narrative is nothing different if one would say it in plain text. But like an auteur's film, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE wins you through its screenplay, usage of light, cinematography, acting and music which takes the entire context of adultery and morality deeper with a higher philosophical undertone. Set in Hongkong of sixties, the film is about two characters - Chow Mo-wan (played by Tony Leung), a journalist and Su Li-zhen (played by Maggie Cheung), a secretary from a shipping company, both of whom rent a room in an apartment of a building on the same day. Their encounters on the streets or in the stairs were limited to exchange of pleasantries but both of them shared together a lot of loneliness and pain separately in each of their apartment rooms. Chow's wife and Su's husband are most of the time out of the town on their work assignments thereby leaving their better halves to lead a monotonous life in an otherwise crowded city.

There are beautifully shot motifs with lovely background scores showing both these characters carrying forward with their mundane jobs with a smile in their face and hollowness in their heart. During the course of time both gather that their spouses are almost always out (of town) during the same time eventually realizing that they were having extra marital affairs. Chow and Su feel devastated to acknowledge this in front of each other, initially thinking, that only one of them knew about it. [Generally, had the film been made in Bollywood/Hollywood there would have been some very obvious direction that the narrative would have moved. Wong Kar Wai's mastery lies in exploring beyond the obvious even in such a straightforward plot.] Both Mr. Chow and Ms. Su become curious to know why their spouse's cheated on th

When I fist watched the movie, I said to myself, "so a film can be made like this." Wong Kar Wai's gorgeous poetic love story captured me throughout and even after the film. I must admit this is one of the best love movies, maybe the best of all, I have ever watched. The content and the form overlaps perfectly. As watching the secret love we see the characters in bounded frames that limits their movements as well as their feelings. Beautiful camera angles and the lighting makes the feelings and the blues even touchable. I want to congratulate Christopher Doyle and Pin Bing Lee for their fantastic cinematography which creates the mood for love. Also the music defines the sadness of the love which plays along the beautiful slow motion frames and shows the characters in despairing moods. And of course the performances of the actors which makes the love so real. Eventually, all the elements in the film combined in a perfect way under the direction of WKW and give the audience the feeling called love.