In the Mood for Love

2000 romance

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Neighbors connect after discovering their spouses are cheating on them with the other's spouse.

Kar-Wai Wong could say that he finds the story of the tragedy of missed connections or failed romance as beautiful as a love story with a happy ending, but I wouldn't understand him because we don't speak the same language. This movie has language, but it's the visual language that really communicates here. Wong's a wizard in the ways he conjures these colors, colors that just made me swoon. I could spend two hours just looking at the dresses in this movie, especially if Maggie Cheung's wearing them because quite frankly, I enjoy her shape. I'm not able to articulate exactly what any of these color combinations mean because they're not communicating on a logical level. They mean something in some recesses of the soul.

This is one of the best-looking movies I've ever seen. The colors are part of it, but the framing of these shots, the recurring visual motifs, this crisp cinematography, these two gorgeous human beings, and the movie's rhythm all contribute to its aesthetic appeal. I loved all these random shots--of excessive smoking rising into a light (smoking has rarely looked this good in a film), the panning shots of food during a reenactment that looked more like how a tennis movie should be filmed, lots of clocks, those walks for noodles at the noodle stand, Mahjong tiles, lots and lots of hallways, shadows of a blowing curtain.

The leads are filmed with the same eye as the colors. Cheung and Tony Chiu-Wai Lang really are gorgeous, but they also know how to move. Both make all sorts of barely-perceptible movements that have enormous amounts of meaning. Sadness, longing, jealousy, more longing, horniness, indecision, understanding, not understanding, more longing, desire, and every other possible emotion that two people in this couple's particular situation could have are articulated without any verbal communication. They verbally communicate, but you could watch them work their bodies and get the same messages. Wong also frames them so well, using the architecture and set design to help us understand these characters and their situations. Walls trap them, ceilings seemingly cave in on them, bars and other obstacles obstruct. Sometimes, they're just shadows.

"The past is something he could see but not touch. And everything he see is blurred and indistinct." Oh, shit!