#(I find it so difficult to capture the delicacy and artistry of music within writing because so much of it requires visual imagery)

[youling-the-ghost]

Violinist Titch is a headcanon that came to me during class today and would not leave my head so now I must share it with the fandom. Violinist Titch is now canon, I don't care what anyone else says (/j /lh).

Also, pianist Derek. I will not be elaborating.

[dweemeister]

In the Mood for Love (2000, Hong Kong)

Nearing the turn of the twentieth century and with the final holdouts of colonialism being freed, Western audiences could not separate Chinese-language cinema from their perceptions of period costumes and stirring action. One director born in Shanghai but raised in Hong Kong – whether he was considering Western attitudes or not – aimed directly at those expectations with Days of Being Wild (1990) and Chungking Express (1994). That director is Wong Kar-wai, and his In the Mood for Love (it should be noted this is only second film of his that I have seen, so this write-up may be deprived of comparative auteuristic commentary) has since become a staple of international cinema for a new millennium. Certainly, there are burdens and benefits alike of being labeled as an international classic – such recognition allows a film to be more widely seen, but sociocultural nuances tend to be lost on those further away from the concerns and settings of these films.

That distance was something I struggled with throughout almost all of In the Mood for Love’s ninety-eight minutes of romantic drama (and am continuing to grapple with). Despite these personal labors, In the Mood for Love has an exquisite delicacy to its artistry – from central actors Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, its production design, the camerawork, and even its diegetic music and soundtrack including Peking and Cantonese opera – but the film’s use of Nat King Cole (a favorite of Wong’s mother) singing Latin music is most notable.

It is 1962 in Hong Kong and two Shanghainese transplants – journalist/creative writer Chow Mo-wan (Leung) and secretary Su Li-zhen (Cheung) – find themselves to be neighbors in a tenement building located within a neighborhood populated by Shanghainese immigrants (cultural and linguistic differences between the Shanghainese and the Cantonese-speaking Hong Kongers assured that both groups had minimal contact with the other). They are both married, as their respective spouses are away from home most hours of the day. Lunches and dinners alone become routine. Eventually, Chow and Su get together, share stories, and realize that their respective spouses are engaged in an affair with each other. Coincidences of infidelity be damned, a friendship forms due to nuptial neglect. But this is a romantic drama, so of course feelings develop as Chow and Su realize the incredible irony of their mutual attraction. 

This is what it must have been like for our spouses, Su observes. “Feelings can creep up just like that. I thought I was in control,” Chow muses.

Their spouses are never depicted and any romantic inklings are kept to dialogue and close-up and medium-length shots of the two actors gazing at each other. In the cinema of other directors and other nations, romance can be a sweaty, sordid thing. For Wong – as he accomplished in Days of Being Wild – sensuousness is achieved by his two characters realizing that they will be no better than their respective spouses if they consummate rather than just collaborate. In the Mood for Love is a more sexually repressed piece than Days of Being Wild and, somehow, the former is the more romantic, arguably more erotic, experience. Both rely on hushed tones, but In the Mood for Love restrains itself from even private displays of affection. Days of Being Wild’s greens and rainy-day grays are substituted for In the Mood for Love’s glaring yellow streetlights, lamplights, and interiors and its red curtains. Su’s collection of qipao – almost all of them adorned in warm colors – manage to increase the sexual tension with those high collars and flowered patterns. It is difficult to recall another film that so directs its emotional contours through costuming; credit costume designer William Chang (who also co-produced, edited, and designed the film’s sets) for his keen eye.

Wong – who also produced and wrote In the Mood for Love – occasionally leads his central characters to plot developments that might appear arbitrary and too impeccably timed. Some of these less believable moments include Chow’s invitation to Su to assist him in completing his martial arts serial for his publication and the penultimate flash-forward. These screenwriting decisions should have buckled and battered an otherwise beautifully-crafted film. To some degree of rescue, it is the two central performances that sell these moments. Also starring in Days of Being Wild ten years earlier, Cheung – who plays a different character here with the same name from that past role – required several hours of makeup and costuming before shooting. In this film, Cheung, like her costar, must be disarming yet muted. She carries herself with elegance for the entire production, and a scene where she is suggestively walking upstairs while Leung is walking downstairs is astonishing physical acting. In another era, in another film, such a scene might have been considered shallow, scandalous; here, it only emphasizes how unintentional her character’s connection to Leung’s is. For Leung, he embodies a man’s inclinations to human interaction without realizing or mentioning the immediate significance or basic point of such relationships – no matter the length of acquaintance. His head is somewhere in the clouds, lost to disappointment and to the realization of being in the mood for love but refusing – like Cheung – to do much about it.

Delays in production – Cheung and Leung mostly improvised their lines as the screenplay only provided direction, not dialogue; a protracted Asian financial crisis also factored – forced cinematographer Christopher Doyle (Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express) to depart the film midway through, being replaced Mark Lee Ping Bin (a favorite of Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, perhaps most notably for 2015′s The Assassin). Both Doyle and Lee are afforded credits, and it is unclear – at least, from the literature I have gleamed (I get this funny feeling the Criterion release has extras material that would be relevant) – which cinematographer shot certain scenes. Shooting on-site mostly in Bangkok alongside Hong Kong, Doyle and Lee place their cameras low to the ground, around street corners, beneath the surfaces of desks and dinner tables, and through open doors and windowsills. As characters walk from one destination to the next, the camera floats along, keeping a distance neither intrusive nor distant – always within reasonable earshot. The effect is a little voyeuristic, never violating. Perhaps, here, it is apt to consider that Wong initially wanted to call this film Secrets (he backtracked, believing too many films already had “secrets” in their title... he settled on In the Mood for Love after listening to Bryan Ferry’s “I’m in the Mood for Love”). Chow and Su’s clandestine friendship is provided further mystique by the cinematography, in addition to the film’s palette.

Doyle and Lee’s use of space heightens awareness of empty spaces – spaces where a spouse, a group of friends might otherwise occupy. Instead, Chow and Su’s world of loneliness is a byproduct of a sort of disownment, of unbelonging. There are few better places reflective of that imbalance than Hong Kong: a place where West and East intermingle, where mainlanders and Hong Kongers self-segregate, where love goes to be lost as well as found.

This is where William Chang’s art direction stars, but most especially the film’s soundtrack. Only a handful of non-musical films can boast a soundtrack – which is distinct from a film’s score – that can enliven the atmosphere and gift the setting a quality belying the artifice of cinema sets. For various reasons that should be explained elsewhere, modern filmmakers are gravitating towards non-original soundtracks over original scores (something that grates yours truly, but I digress), and In the Mood for Love’s use of various songs – from Nat King Cole’s versions of “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás”, “Aquellos Ojos Verdes”, and “Te Quiero Dijiste” and songs like “Shuang Shuang Yan” by Deng Bai Ying – reflect Hong Kong’s cultural influences and sometimes the moods of the central characters (In the Mood for Love could be described as a mood piece). Never overwhelming the sound mix, these songs were the soundtrack for a previous generation of Hong Kongers, and their presence here is autobiographical, heartfelt.

The final scene of In the Mood for Love was shot at Angkor Wat in Cambodia in the film’s only nod to historical events. Originally a Hindu temple, later converted to a Buddhist temple, and on the route connecting India to Southeast Asia and China, Angkor Wat would be largely untouched by two future events – the carnage of American intervention in the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge’s genocide. It, too, became a cultural crossroads. In the Mood for Love aspires to a similar timelessness. In mumbles and secretive whispers into darkened corners, In the Mood for Love captures an impossible romance committed to its characters’ desires and motivations. Time – from the film’s setting and the year of its release – appears not to have diminished the passions kept within.

My rating: 10/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. In the Mood for Love is the one hundred and thirty-ninth film I have rated a ten on imdb.