In the Mood for Love (Wong, 2000)

When a film seems much longer than it actually is, it is usually is a boring piece of tripe. (:cough: The Lake House. ) Yet here it is a testament to the power of In the Mood for Love, where so much passion and heartache is crammed into a languid 98 minutes that it emerges as a sensual epic.

Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan are new neighbors, who after discovering that their respective spouses are having affairs with each other, begin a delicate relationship of their own. But there is nothing from the sordid pages of Closer; the relationship is as wistful as it is real, as wishful as it is fleeting. For someone who works without a script, director Wong Kai-Wai constructs a remarkably tight narrative while working within his characteristic parallel structure. The parallel is looser here, as the adulterate husband and wife are shown only briefly through disembodied voices and shots from the back, leaving the focus on Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan. Their relationship is subtly developed through vignettes reenacting the affair between the spouses, and the romantic tension pulses, even though there isn’t no much as a kiss.

It is the aesthetics of the film that bring out its full heartache and beauty. The brief encounters in the stairwell set to a hauntingly romantic score and slow motion walk the tender line between fulfillment and exasperation. The stylized cinematography glamorizes the aging alleys of 1960s Hong Kong. The perfectly coiffed Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan are embodiments of a bygone era as well as protagonists in a futile love story.

Despite all the praise that I have lavished, In the Mood for Love is a film that I admire more than I love. Here is the inherent shortcoming to my viewing habits: I cannot pass judgment on a love story until I know what the heck love is.

A random musing: I have long ruminated on the importance of titles when we look at the work, be it a book, a film or a poem. There is always a certain awkwardness in translation, and I much prefer the original Chinese title of 花樣年華 (literally something like: When the Flowers were in Bloom), which has a touch more melancholy.