Writer-director Wong Kar-wai pulls off a great irony with his masterpiece, In the Mood for Love: he makes a rapturous romance that’s not about a pair of lovers, but a pair of cuckolds.
Set in 1962 Hong Kong, the film stars Tony Leung Chiu-Wai as Mr. Chow and Maggie Cheung as Mrs. Chan, neighbors in a busy, crowded apartment building. They move in on the same day, when their homes immediately begin to intermingle (the movers are constantly bringing the wrong items into the wrong units). Soon this becomes literal, when Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan—who have only exchanged pleasantries in the hallways—begin to suspect their respective spouses of having an affair with each other.
This leaves the two central figures alone most nights, walking around the corner and down some steps to pick up dinner at a noodle stall, a ritual Wong infuses with an aching romanticism. Gone are the antic camera movements of Fallen Angels or the pop-song rhythms of Chungking Express (as arresting as those aesthetic flourishes were), replaced by the lilting violins of Shigeru Umebayashi’s “Yumeji’s Theme” (originally composed for another film) and a gentle, judicious use of slow motion. When Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan pass each other on the stairway, it’s as if you’re watching two halves of a broken heart throb.
Eventually, the pair connect the dots. But rather than engaging in a vengeful affair (“We won’t be like them”), they masochistically imagine together which of their spouses made the first move and what they say to each other. They even go so far as to visit the hotel that serves as the likely location of betrayal. This strange, sad relationship threatens to tip into infidelity at any moment—the sexual tension is thick, largely because it’s so underplayed by the two stars. Instead, they channel their energy into something more creative: both are fans of martial-arts serials published in the newspaper, so Mr. Chow begins writing one, with Mrs. Chan serving as his sounding board and editor.
Leung is perhaps the perfect actor for such a part. Ridiculously handsome, yet suffused with a natural sadness that keeps him touchable, Leung returns to the resigned melancholy he carried in Chungking Express rather than the spurned anger of Happy Together. Mr. Chow claims he doesn’t “brood” over his wife’s infidelities, yet he is clearly, as a friend describes him, “bottled up.” His immaculate suits and perfectly combed hair suggest a man at ease with his situation, but Leung’s eyes—which widen with panicked longing when he looks at Mrs. Chan—suggest otherwise.
Cheung is even better. Also a Wong veteran (As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time), Cheung has a reticence that works in perfect rhythm with Leung’s reserve. Mrs. Chan is “bottled up” in a different way. The costuming does much of this, as her high-necked cheongsam dresses—whose colors are often chosen to match a typewriter, say, or telephone in a given scene—erect an immaculately detailed wall just under her chin. But it’s also her face. During one of their role-playing sessions, Mrs. Chan puts on an implacable expression as she imagines her husband confessing, but then the bulwark built by their game suddenly comes crashing down: “I didn’t expect it to hurt so much.” Much later, revisiting the apartment after years have gone by, she stares out the window forcing down tears.
It’s not only the costumes that are impeccably designed. Every lamp and clock is perfectly placed, emitting—more often than not—a deep red or green glow. The hotel, where Mr. Chow eventually rents a room as a writing studio, is designed almost entirely in red. On at least two occasions there, Wong indulges in one of his Mood moments, where the camera simply watches Leung or Cheung languidly move in sumptuous space, infusing their sadness with a respectful elegance.
Not that the stylization takes away the hurt. In the Mood for Love concludes a few years past 1962, with a politically tinged sojourn to Cambodia (we briefly see news footage of a visit from French president Charles de Gaulle, visiting on the eve of the Vietnam War’s encroachment into the country). Eventually the camera settles on Mr. Chow, alone amidst the ruined, ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat. In a callback to a similar moment in Happy Together, Mr. Chow whispers something into a hole in one of the temple’s walls—a secret we cannot hear, shared with no one, hidden in the wall with a patch of mud. If territories, countries, whole civilizations fail to last, how could he have expected his marriage to be any more enduring, much less his voltaic time with Mrs. Chan?
