In the Mood for Love (2000)
Directed by Wong Kar-Wai
In 1960s Hong Kong, two neighbors form an intimate bond after making a discovery about their spouses in this visually stunning tale of unrequited love.
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15 films that influenced In the Mood for Love
What critics say influenced In the Mood for Love
An Asian spin on such classics of forbidden passion and lost romance as 1945's "Brief Encounter" would seem the last thing one would expect from director Wong Kar-wai, best known for such freewheeling, improvisational efforts as "Chungking Express" (1994) and "Happy Together" (1997).
At the Lincoln Plaza, the Angelika.RAPTUROUSLY elegant and deeply sexy in a deliciously restrained way, Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love” is one of the most romantic movies I have ever seen, right up there with “Brief Encounter” and “Casablanca.”
"In the Mood for Love" is a real old-fashioned romance, suffused with unspoken desire -- in the mode of David Lean and Noel Coward's classic British railway station romance, "Brief Encounter," which was also about two married people who fell hard yet stayed apart.
Wong Kar-wai has created a classic of the genre with "In the Mood for Love" that can stand alongside David Lean's "Brief Encounter."
In his latest and arguably best film, In the Mood for Love, he addresses each of those preoccupations in a ravishingly beautiful tone poem that plays like a Chinese remake of Brief Encounter.
In interviews with the Western press, Wong speaks of being inspired by Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
In the close attention paid by their respective boarders, it recalls the opening moments of Splendor in the Grass; in Mrs. Chan's interactions with her boss and the just-off-screen conversations Mr. Chow has with his wife ("She went home early?
It's not unlike the "seduction" scene from Budd Boetticher's Seven Men From Now--a strange connection, I know, but defensible from the perspective of the two pictures' poetic, romantic brevity.
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He is a journalist with a selection of suits and ties that Richard Gere would have killed for in his "American Gigolo" days.
As costumed by William Chang Suk-ping, she dresses in nothing but cheongsams, more than 20 in a wonderful variety of fabrics, giving the traditional high-necked sheath once popular in Shanghai more screen time than it's had since "The World of Suzie Wong."
Leung — not to be confused with the actor who starred in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s “The Lover,” Tony Leung Kar-fai — has a grave, refined presence, but there’s a boyishness to his dignity that’s almost overtly sexual.
In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wa) deals with the unrequited love that Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai of Hard Boiled fame) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) feel for each other after discovering the adultery their spouses have been practicing.
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It rivals the power of the well-known final freeze-frame shot in The 400 Blows and the emotional final visual of the lesser-known The Butterfly .
Similar to Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" or Bertolucci's "Besieged" in sheer aesthetic beauty, the film exudes sensuality through image and sound.