The Bottom Line: For admirers of technique(acting and photographing) and the cinema of terminal alienation.
Devoid of action though not entirely devoid of interest.
Stephen_Murray's Full Review: In the Mood for Love
The key word in the English title is “mood.” (The Chinese title is something like “Beautiful Memories of Long Ago.”) Although the predominant color in the color scheme is red, the film’s mood is blue, blue, blue.
The film begins with two married couples moving into rented rooms in adjacent apartments in Hong Kong, circa 1962. It seems that the husband of one and the wife of the other are having affairs. At least those two are always gone. The abadoned spouses are Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung (who also starred in Wong Karwai’s “Chungking Express “ and “Happy Together”) and Maggie Cheung (The Actress, Police Story III, Irma Vep). How could they not notice each other? How could they not be interested in how the other one feels about being betrayed?
Well they do notice each other, but I am not sure how they feel about their absent spouses. And although adultery would not be a novelty in any Chinese culture, and although others assume they are having an affair, they “have the name without having the game.” They become friends but hold on to their resolve not to do unto their spouses as their spouses are doing unto them. One eventually falls in love, but possible connections are repeatedly missed.
The slow pace, the pervasive sadness, the artsy camera placement, the repetitious music, the beautifully photographed despair make “In the Mood” seem much more like a movie from Taiwan than one from Hong Kong. But the characters are speaking Cantonese (except for the more prominent of the landladies, who speaks Shanghaiese). And for no reason I can fathom, the film ends at Angkor War, after newsreel footage of Charles de Gaulle’s visit to Phnom Phen. This is not a complaint, because Angkor Wat is more deserving of the superlative cinematography than the locales in which Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow eat, meet, work, or live.
The visual compositions throughout are impressive and the camera moves fluidly. The colors are less garish than those in “Happy Together,” in which Wong provided a more dramatic view of a couple’s failure to connect and even filmed a sex scene, albeit only one that was very early in the film. The rueful Tony Leung wears elegantly tailored suits -- that are frequently rain-soaked. Even his sleeveless t-shirts are immaculately ironed. And his coiffure showed me what is meant by a “razor-sharp”part. Maggie Cheung wears a series of dresses with a high neckline, practically no sleeves, and an astonishing variety of patterns. We never hear what one would think (not least because it is used in the previews) would be the title song. Instead, there is a Nat King Cole song played over and over and over. Plus many scenes begin with a musical theme so “dramatic” that it must be meant as a parody.
Two couples move into their new apartments on the same day in Hong Kong,1962. As the couples spend more and more time together, the womenrealize their...More at HotMovieSale.com
Melodrama DVD - Boldly mannered yet surprisingly delicate, In the Mood for Love is a wondrously perverse movie that not only evokes a lost moment in t...More at Barnes and Noble
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