In the Mood for Love

 IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE
FA YEUNG NIN WAH
(traditional Chinese: 花樣年華
simplified Chinese: 花样年华 
lit. 'Flower-like Years', 'the prime of one's youth') 
Writer & Director ~ Wong Kar-Wai
2000, Hong Kong-France
Stars ~ Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Chiu-wai, Ping-Lam Siu

It starts with a set-piece straight from a farce: two neighbours moving in at the same time, the movers getting their possessions mixed up when delivering to the wrong apartment. It could be comedy, or meet-cute, but that’s not this film. It’s the first of many times that they graze past eachother before they meet properly, and when they do they just kinda drift into the narrative. They fall into dramatising their belief that their spouses are having being unfaithful with one another; they role-play how they think the affair happened and confrontations. And of course. It is no surprise that they fall into the very trap that they themselves have set.

In fact, that’s not the only farcical situation they find themselves in, trapped in a room to avoid discovery while their neighbours play mah jong outside all night. Indeed, the supporting cast we see could easily be comedic if turned up a bit. But the film is harnessed to the introverted, somewhat serious and brittle lead characters. 

It is Wong Kar Wai’s seventh film, built from daily improvisation and collaboration with the actors, an idea rather than a script; Wong crafts the story in the edit, describes himself as a band leader. Developed originally from the idea of exploring characters through food and the title ‘A Story of Food’. It is set in Hong Kong1962, the year Wong’s family moved from Shaghai to Hong Kong.The surface of this film, encapsulating highly attractive people with unspoken desire, has had a long-term influence on advertising. Certainly its use of slo-mo moodiness hasn’t dated, a motif of romantic evocation. In fact, ‘In the Mood for Love’ has proven a popular recurring screening with twenty-somethings at London’s Prince Charles cult cinema.  The whole film looks dipped in mint and rouge, perhaps the occasional plum, and a jukebox of oldies. The choice of Nat King Cole is because Cole was his mother’s favourite. It is chic and dressed to knock you out; even the characters say of Maggie Wong’s gorgeous parade of cheongsam dresses, “She dresses like that to buy noodles?” They have money but nowhere to go?

Wong started in Hong Kong With Chris Doyle, then moved the shoot to Bangkok with Mark Lee when Doyle walked away. He discovered that Bangkok looked more like the era he was trying to capture, meaning the film was shot twice over. This added to an already arduous production that had endured Asian financial crises on top of Wong’s protracting improvisational style and starting production on already for its sequel, ‘2046’. And yet it is obvious that he had a confident vision, for the film feels of a whole, never hinting at any fractuous two year production. For example, Wong talks of how the intent was “we always wanted to keep the audience as one of the neighbours” and a passing-by and voyeuristic mood is kept throughout. 

Where the mode for much film is for characters asserting themselves, finding their voice, the characters of journalist Chow Mo-wan and a shopping company secretary Mrs. Chan are both introspective and quiet. For the most part the mood, movement and music elucidate their thoughts and turmoil. Tony Leung seems to have simply gone with the flow whilst Maggie Cheung struggled at first with the lack of structure and dialogue, although eventually finding her rhythm with it. She now considers that she put her soul into it, and certainly Wong casts the impression that he sees this definitely as a collaboration, always saying “we” when interviewed about the production. Rarely are reserved characters given such elegant context and roam and romance in. 

Wong has spoken  of the influence of Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’, of the fact because the protagonists are a handsome pair that we don’t suspect them of darkness or creepiness: “Just imagine if it was John Malkovich playing this role. You would think, ‘This guy is really weird.’” That’s true, but also that the aesthetic doesn’t play that card either, saturating us in the tragedy of the unrequited love of two heartbroken people, giving that as the impetus. Certainly when you add suspicion to their behaviour, you can detect that Chow is perhaps manipulating Mrs. Chan, where he appears to be the director of the role-playing. Yet, malevolence does not linger as an aftertaste, just loneliness.  
 
Like Truffaut’s ‘Lift to the Scaffold’, ‘In the Mood for Love’ is a quintessential example of a jazzy mood put on screen. One could translate the slow motion and glides punctuated repeatedly by ‘Yumeji’s Theme’ as an evocation and romanticism of nostalgia and memory itself: certainly it insists on its own mournful elegance. It is a film where Wong is trying to recapture an era and the gossip of his childhood. With that, the longing of the film is similar to that of coming-of-age. Mood and memory is the story.