In the Mood for Love
d. Wong Kar-wai, 2000
Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love is, above all, a beautifully conceived film. Not many recent films would be able to match its amazing compositions (I'm thinking of Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies, andHou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times). The film follows two people, beautifully played by Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, who live in adjacent apartments in China circa 1962. They both realize that their partners are cheating on them with one another, and they try to see how to approach the situation. Though not too heavy on plot, In the Mood for Love observes the lives of these people with such artistry that I don't really care. The main undercurrents of the film are repressed love and missed opportunities. The two main characters fall in love, but decide not to act on it because of what people might say ("We can't be like them," she tells him, referring to their spouses), but the film never elevates to the heights of a melodrama like All That Heaven Allows. Instead, the ethereal In the Mood for Love is a nostalgic, elegiac portrait of a love that never was.
