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rented
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copyright ©1999-2002
DigsMagazine.com.
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flick pick
| In
the
Mood for
Love 2000
Directed + written by: Wong
Kar-Wai
Starring: Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung
Language: Cantonese [with English subtitles]
Look for it at the video store under:
foreign [Hong Kong], drama
Watch it when you’re in the mood
for
something: artsy-fartsy,
lovey,
nostalgic
|
The critic says:
 /
5 the rating system
explained
Fun factor: ½/5 |
Plot synopsis
It’s 1963, and in a Shanghai
apartment building, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan move into adjacent apartments
on the same day. Both are married to spouses who are constantly either
working late or abroad on business, and as result, both frequently find
themselves alone when they come home from their offices at night. They
pass each other in the hallways, on the street, by a nearby noodle
stand, and never stop to really take notice of one another, talk, become
friends. But slowly, each starts to suspect that their two spouses are
having an affair with each other. One day, Mr. Chow takes the initiative
to invite Mrs. Chan out for dinner, and the two confront each other with
their suspicions. A strange friendship, born out of shared loneliness
and betrayal, blossoms into love as the two neighbors attempt to
understand how it is that they’re spouses came to fall in love with
each other.
Review
In the Mood for Love is the sort of movie that makes you almost
forget to breathe. It’s so quiet and intimate, like whispered secrets
shared at three am, and feels as fluid and fragile as a dream: you worry
that even something so small as a sigh might shatter its perfect,
achingly lovely, delicately sensuous mood. It’s about love but it’s
not a typical movie love story; this isn’t some grand cinematic
Romance complete with swelling music and fevered confessions, sexual
tension disguised behind witty banter, frenzied kisses stolen in dark
alley corners under the pouring rain. Actually, there’s a fair amount
of rain, but no kisses at all: this love story develops between the
lines, in spaces that happen off-screen. The emphasis isn’t on the
physical, external expression of love, but the emotional, internalized
feeling of love, and it’s this, as much as the fact that it’s set in
an earlier era, that makes the film seem a product of another time, a
classic despite the fact that it was released in 2000. There’s little
in the way of character development – all we ever really understand
about Mrs. Chan is that she has an endless supply of fantastically
gorgeous, nearly interchangeable frocks – and the plot’s pretty much
nil, but that’s the genius of this film: it captures the generalities
of love and loneliness, hope and doom so well that most of the specific
events that have led to those emotions simply aren’t important. What
it says about love in its silences – a tentative touching and retreat
of hands in a taxicab, two bodies brushing past each other in slow
motion on a stairwell – goes beyond explanations of hows or whys. It’s
just a feeling – mysterious, gorgeous, heartbreaking -- that lingers
with you.
—reviewed by
Y. Sun
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