Let me preface what I'm about to say by letting you know there are things in this review that may or may not be spoilers.

In The Mood For Love
***/***** (3 Stars)

This film has generated a fair amount of buzz in the festival circuit. To be quite honest, I wasn't all that impressed. It looked promising for the first half, but then just became sludge... nothing was really going on and the spineless characters made me sick. I loved where the story was going, but it never actually got there in my opinion. It just felt as though they ran out of steam. I got rather bored with it near the end - and the ending itself really ticked me off... Well it would have, but by then I had somewhat lost interest.

Maggie Cheung was exquisite as usual - even more so than usual - beautiful and radiant. Tony Leung played his part well - he was less than charismatic, but I believe he was supposed to be a fairly rigid character. I found the cinematography to be quite excellent. It was well crafted and filmed and acted and even the score was great - reminded me of some italian cinema or even Peter Greenaway-esque. The whole thing was very stylish and
fresh. The score got old really quickly when they kept playing the same looped bit of song over and over and over... it sounded like it was supposed to be a small orchestra doing a live score, but it was totally a recording. Minor flaw. I was prepared to give it a 4 Star rating or better, but the ending stunk it up. Not just the very ending, but the last 20 minutes before that just dragged and then they leave us with "that".

Unsatisfying.

Not tragic, not happy, just "blah". Plus, it made me realize how pitiful the characters were for allowing their spouses to cheat on them and not do anything about it except fawn over each other while treating it as forbidden territory. I understand the time and location at which this was supposed to take place and all - but still... I cry at movies sometimes - I'm not afraid to admit it - but I felt nothing for these characters... I wanted to and I kept waiting to, but nothing. Oh well... different strokes for different folks I guess since most people seem to really love this film.

The Mei Ah DVD was truly weak compared to what I imagine the French version to be like. Mei Ah has been improving, but this one doesn't show that. The AR is damn close to 4:3 - too close to even call it widescreen - although it's a little widescreen. The sound was a bit bass heavy during the talking which was annoying. The picture was fairly clean with the normal amount of specks here and there (for a recent Mei Ah release). The subtitles were bad as well - they missed a few pieces of dialogue - but it was stuff that wasn't crucial anyway... they did however neglect to subtitle the chinese text between the film's different acts except for one... I think the DVD should've been one of Mei Ah's $40HKD discs instead of 150HKD. Overpriced for what I got. It was still cheaper than the French version which I'm glad I skipped since I wasn't all that jazzed about the film anyway.

*Four months later

I ended up getting the French version after all and It easily blows away the Mei Ah version. I also enjoyed the film a little more but I still found it to be trying a little too hard to be artsy for artsy sake. Many people will love this film, but I didn't really see it as much better than average. The french DVD is awesome though and it certainly made me appreciate it more. The Mei Ah version should be skipped I think since this version is out there.

I played around with the second disc some too and it's one of the best supplement discs I've ever encountered. They went all out. The menus are cool and they have many language options available. I picked english for the small part I checked out and it had Wong Kar Wai speaking English, but I don't know if you choose other languages if it's the same info reshot or if it's dubbed or subtitled. There's no question that the French DVD is the best way to view this film...

*This review was originally written in September of 2001 and appeared on DVDTalk.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older