From the Vault: In the Mood for Love

In which I review a randomly-selected film from my collection.

As you might recall from last week's Date Night, I've gotten into a really bad habit of blind-buying movies and then simply never watching them.  Although I was recently able to cross off Zodiac, the list was never-the-less extensive: the Three Colors trilogy, Reservoir Dogs, Dr. Strangelove, Infernal Affairs, Lawrence of Arabia and In the Mood for Love.  In light of this, I opted to bend the rules of this series and randomly-selected one of those eight films to review.  And because of a slight mix-up concerning when tonight's episode of Gotham aired, I found myself with a little bit of extra time on my hands to hammer something out.

When Secretary Su Li-zhen and her husband move into the same building as Journalist Chow Mo-wan and his wife in 1960's Hong Kong, it seemed like a brave new chapter in both couples' lives.  But with Su's husband always away on business and Chow's wife always working late, their happiness soon deteriorates into isolation and longing.  Drawn to each other's company, Su and Chow begin to suspect that their spouses are having an affair with one another.  But despite their partners' infidelities and their growing romance, they know that they can never act on their mutual feelings for one another without repeating their spouses' cycles of lies an betrayal.

Having been exposed to director Wong Kar-wai through Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love was not the follow-up that I expected.  Whereas Chungking Express was erratically paced and edited - lurching eagerly from shot to shot with no consideration for how it would get there - In the Mood for Love is slowly paced, methodically strung-together and constrictively shot.  Abandoning an aesthetic of enthusiasm over experience, the film expresses an insightful maturity towards its subjects that its predecessor would have lost in its youthful exuberance.

Chungking Express: a constant blur of action and movement. 

In the Mood for Love is a perfect case-study of cinematic cohesion.  From conception to execution, every facet of the film - writing, acting, shot composition, score - fits together like pieces of a puzzle, forming a greater picture than its components parts could ever manage on their own.  Every fragment of dialog, lingering silence and subtle motion builds upon its central themes of social confinement and impossible desire.  You don't watch In the Mood for Love, you experience it.  Wong Kar-wai's singular, driving aesthetic inserts his audience into the narrative so subtly and so completely that it is impossible to leave without living through the heartbreak and dejection of its protagonists.

More than anything else, the film shows off Wong Kar-wai's flair for cinematography and shot composition.  Scenes involving the supporting cast are crowded and uncomfortably closed-in.  Shots are framed by windows, doorways, stairwells and curtains: closing off the natural scope of the camera to a mere fraction of what audiences - especially Western audiences - have come to expect from a contemporary film,  Character's bodies are often segmented into mere bits of anatomy - feet, hands, shoulders, back, head - or speak from off-camera entirely, reinforcing the impression that there is not enough room for them in the world in which they find themselves.

Su and Chow pass each other in a confined alley.

When either Su or Chow are shown in isolation from the rest of the cast, however, the cinematography changes.  They are shown in more familiar medium close-ups, from far greater distances and free from the obstructions that clutter the more claustrophobic group shots.  The spaces that they find themselves in alone at night are broad and expansive, emphasizing their isolation in a vast, lonely world that seems to be populated exclusively by themselves.

What is most striking however, is the manner in which the audience views the protagonists.  While supporting characters are often shown directly, Su and Chow are rarely scene front-on.  They are viewed through their mirrored reflections and kaleidoscopic refractions.  Even when not shown through an intermediary, they are often either shown from behind or with their faces otherwise obscured.  It is as if their true selves - their longing for meaningful relationships and personal connections - are so isolated from the world, that they refuse to show them even in solitude, with only the camera to bear witness to it.

In the Mood for Love is the kind of film that stalks the recesses of your conciousness long after the credits stop rolling and the screen fades to black.  If I would have been asked even a day ago what I felt about it, my opinion would be far different from what it was the day before and even what it is today.  Its a romance veiled in smoke: twisting tendrils parting to reveal new meaning even as it shifts to obscure others.  I am confident that it is a film that will only grow more signifigant and appreciated with time.  Overall, I would give it an 8/10.

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