Synopsis

This beautiful and evocative film is set in Hong Kong of 1962. Chow, a newspaper editor, moves into a building with his wife, where Li-zhen, a beautiful secretary and her husband, have also moved in. With their spouses often away, Chow and Li-zhen cross each others path, and a discovery of common tastes begins. Their worlds are turned upside down when they discover their spouses having an affair with each other. Hurt and angry, they seek comfort in one another. As the friendship grows into something more, they resolve not to go the path of their unfaithful mates. But can matters of the heart be controlled so easily?

 

Credits

Directed by - Kar Wai Wong

Writing credits - Kar Wai Wong

Cast (in credits order)
Maggie Cheung - Su Li-zhen - Mrs. Chan
Tony Leung Chiu Wai - Chow Mo-wan
Ping Lam Siu - Ah Ping
Tung Cho 'Joe' Cheung - Man living in Mr. Koo's apartment

Produced by - Kar Wai Wong

Original Music by - Michael Galasso Shigeru Umebayashi

Cinematography by - Christopher Doyle Pin Bing Lee

Film Editing by - William Chang

Influences

Wong states he was very influenced by Hitchcock's Vertigo while making this film, and compares Tony Leung's movie character to Jimmy Stewart's:

"the role of Tony in the film reminds me of Jimmy Stewart's in Vertigo. There is a dark side to this character. I think it's very interesting that most of the audience prefers to think that this is a very innocent relationship. These are the good guys, because their spouses are the first ones to be unfaithful and they refuse to be. Nobody sees any darkness in these characters - and yet they are meeting in secret to act out fictitious scenarios of confronting their spouses and of having an affair. I think this happens because the face of Tony Leung is so sympathetic. Just imagine if it was John Malkovich playing this role. You would think, 'This guy is really weird.' It's the same in Vertigo. Everybody thinks Jimmy Stewart is a nice guy, so nobody thinks that his character is actually very sick."

Two novel artistic devices are used in this movie. One is the use of seemingly repetitive scenes and the other is that certain sequences which look like one scene are actually a collage of numerous encounters of the two main characters in the movie. These techniques gave the audience the impression that these two characters were doing the same thing over and over again over a very long period of time. However, paying attention to the dresses (qipao) that Maggie Cheung wears reveals that she wore a different dress in every single shot in those sequences. They are more likely artistic shots with different costume and makeup for each shot.

Chow and Su's spouses are rarely shown and in those occasions their faces are not seen, resulting in brief one-sided scenes in which Wong uses only the angle showing either Chow or Su.

Awards

31 wins & 23 nominations

• Winner - Asia-Pacific Film Festival - Best Cinematography/ Best Editing
• Nominee - BAFTA Awards - Best Filmnot in the English Language
• Nominee - Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards - Best Foreign -Language Film
• Winner - Cannes Film Festival - Best Actor/ Technical Grand Prize
• Nominee - Cannes Film Festival - Golden Palm
• Nominee - Chicago Film Critics Association Awards - Best Cinematography/ Best Foreign Language Film/ Best Original Score
• Winner -César Awards - Best Foreign Film
• Winner - European Film Awards - Screen International Award
• Winner - German Film Awards - Best Foreign Film
• Winner - Hong Kong Film Awards - Best Actor/ Best Actress/ Best Art Direction/ Best Costume & Make Up Design/ Best Film Editing
• Nominee - Hong Kong Film Award - Best Cinematography/ Best Director/ Best New Performer/ Best Original Film Score/ Best Picture/ Best Screenplay/ Best Supporting Actress

Comments

"Elegant and deeply sexy in a deliciously restrained way." Jonathan Foreman New York Post

"You'd be hard-pressed to find a more beautiful movie or one that possesses a more anguished sense of betrayal and loss." Glenn Whipp,Los Angeles Daily News

Trivia

• Filming was shifted from Beijing to Macau after Chinese authorities demanded to see the completed script. The director never uses scripts.
• The number of the hotel room where Chow stays is 2046, which is the director's next feature length film.
• Maggie Cheung wears a different cheong-san dress in each scene. There were 46 in all, though not all made it to the final cut.
• Kar Wai Wong was shooting the finale, and editing the film a little over a week before its debut at Cannes.
• Chosen by "Les Cahiers du cinéma" (France) as one of the 10 best pictures of 2000 (#05)
• Filming took 15 months.
• Maggie Cheung's hair and make-up took five hours a day.
• Director Wong Kar Wai found the English title for "In the mood for love" while listening to a song from an Brian Ferry CD with a similar title, "I'm in the mood for love". It is a cover of a 1930s song with the same title, Wong Kar Wai used the title and the song in an early Hong Kong trailer of the film, and it was also used in the USA films trailer.
• During filming, Wong Kar-Wai improvised often with the actors, crafting the story and mood of the film as he went along. Originally, In the Mood for Love was a much more obvious romance film, with the actors throwing witty dialog at each other and engaging in several scenes of love-making. Eventually, the actors and director decided to tone the mood down to the more subtle version that was released in theatres.

Trailer