In the Mood for Love
I shall not bore you with the list of awards and honors this film won (though it did propel Tony Leung to long-deserved international acclaim), nor bombard you with trivia about how the title came about and what other movies the leads were filming concurrently with this. Instead, let me try to (for one moment) sketch what I think lies at the heart of this movie. Director Wong Ka-Wai, as well as the leads Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, show us the measure of the phrase "understated drama". In an atmosphere where stillness and words left unsaid are exquisitely expressive, the merest flicker of the eyes, drop of a gaze, twirling of a loose strand of hair, and even exhalation itself can make you feel like you're choking with emotion.
The movie revolves around Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) and Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) -- the wife and husband half, respectively, of two couples who move into a cramped apartment block in Hong Kong one fateful day in 1962. Their respective spouses are often away, but they do not much notice each other in the whirl of community living. Yet slowly it is discovered that their spouses are having an affair, and ironically from that gradual revelation, and their attempt to unravel together the why's and how's of it, their own relationship develops and blossoms into a touching love story.
Just as Kazuo Ishiguro gave us a nostalgic look at a repressed but touchingly naïve pre-World War II England in "The Remains of the Day", Wong Ka-Wai weaves a dreamy vision of 1960's Hong Kong. This is a Hong Kong where graceful women in scrumptious cheongsums, wearing their hair tall, sway languidly through dark alley ways at night to cosy neighbourhood noodle stands, or play mahjong all night with friends in loud, yet strangely muted, scenes of cramped domestic liveliness. Not only are the sets, costumes and hairdo's evocative of the period, the music too is delightfully quaint -- from Nat King Cole's Spanish tunes (Quizas, Quizas) to more 'pop' Chinese pieces. Even the lighting is often dimmed to give the illusion of black-and-white scenes. The devil truly is in the details -- from the background cackle in the music from the old radio recalling gramophone-quality recordings, to the large earrings Maggie is never without, to Tony's side part -- so perfect is the illusion that even without ever experienced Hong Kong in the 1960's, I can nearly smell the stench associated with cramped, old quarters, feel the rattle of thin walls as neighbours play mahjong all night, and even almost see the screen graininess that a real old movie might have!
Wong Ka-Wai appreciates the idea of contrast giving rise to beauty. This is most obviously achieved by clever use of lighting -- stripes of light illuminating the actors through gratings, flashes of car headlights breaking the night's dimness or naked light bulbs in dark rooms -- beautiful scenes are shot with an eye for high contrast lighting, all of which gives the old, peeling and run-down alleyways and apartments a grace of their own. The play with contrast also runs to the music, playful tunes sometimes almost clashing with the tragic circumstances, and conversation, loud mahjong pieces and voices gossiping crash through the walls as Maggie and Tony try to, very quietly, hide in his room and write a Wuxia (swordfighting) novel. Other than the visual and audio contrasts there are also thematic contrasts -- particularly striking is how the hues of muted restraint shows up the bright colors of indulgence. The cheating Mr. Chan carelessly gives both mistress and wife the same bag while Maggie's boss carries out a flagrant affair, even having Maggie coordinate gifts to each of them for him. All this is the background against which the smoldering attraction between Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow hang suspended. The camera watches Maggie's figure, swathed in gorgeous, figure-revealing cheongsums with sensual pleasure, but Tony is scarcely allowed to touch it. Tony's vulnerable quietude, clothed in the most self-deprecating suits and skewed ties, invites a smoothing hand, yet Maggie never reaches out to straighten the tie or caress the hurt.
And perhaps that is the highlight of the movie--this quiet romantic and sexual tension between Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow that dissolves into quiet tragedy. "Quiet" is an apt word for the movie--it is sometimes complained of the movie that "nothing happens", and indeed there are very few things that do. The trick is that we are shown and never told, and sometimes not even shown but hinted at and it is up to us to extrapolate and read between the lines of implications. The dramatic tension rising from this is very effective. For instance we, the audience, are not shown the offending spouses, and no one directly accuses the spouses of cheating--we are slowly and ever-so-politely led to this conclusion via a series of hints. In one scene, Tony tells Maggie that her handbag is lovely. Maggie tells him that it's a gift from her husband uniquely from abroad. Here Tony pauses and only later in the conversation does he casually add that his wife has an identical bag. "What a coincidence!" they mutter avoiding each other's eyes. Implications and suggestions load each light word, creating a world of sheer story-telling magic!
The closest we get to a 'fuss' actually being raised is the scene where Maggie practices trying to confront her husband on Tony. She says "I know" and Tony, role-playing as her husband, denies it. Maggie then breaks down. The scene is so quiet, it seems impossible that this is one of the climatic moments, and if one was watching for something physically dramatic, in voice or action, then one might be disappointed. Yet the undercurrents of sexual tension, irony and tragedy are so powerful in here (the man she pretends not-to-love pretending to be her husband to help her confront said perfidious husband) that your guts twist at both characters' control, courage and love.
The movie an ordinary story--two married people who fail to not-fall in love with each other--and makes of it a universal story about muted courage. As if to say that though it is true the "masses of men lead lives of quiet desperation" (Thoreau), it does not mean the masses of men are helpless, it means that they suffer nobly. And indeed the movie is a drama out to wring tears. It is set in a universe where suffering and long years of hollow waiting is noble and unfulfilled romances the more romantic for it, premises which the more practical might rebel against. Yet Wong Ka-Wai tempts even the cynical to believe: Tempts us with lovely sets and costumes in full quaint bloom, beautiful characters and lines (or, better yet expressive silence) executed powerfully by Tony and Maggie, beautiful colors and music awash with nostalgia. Lovingly the camera, cast and crew give us the most beautiful of moods in which Ka-Wai sets a mutedly heart-rending love story. Only the most hard-hearted will be able to refrain from feeling a twinge at the ending, and the majority of mere mortals, who cave in to the temptation to believe in the movie, will swallow tears and rave of the movie in reviews years after watching it.
