This pick is a bit nuanced, and reliant on my interpretation. This
is one of favorite films of the new millennium, and I especially like the choices the director made.
27.13 - Scenes romantic gesture - Cho Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen choose not to be together, In The Mood For Love
I love the entire trilogy, but this one is a masterpiece. I love the tale that Wong Kar Wai weaves here. He has, over the last two decades, almost single handily rescued Hong Kong cinema from lightweight mediocrity through
thematic ambiguity and an arthouse aesthetic.
A seemingly slight plot – man and woman move into the same cramped apartment building, gradually realize
their respective spouses are having an affair and develop their own halting romance – is the platform for profound and moving reflections on life's fundamentals. It's a film about, yes, love; but also betrayal, loss, missed opportunities, memory, the brutality of time's passage, loneliness – the list goes on.
Chow Mo-wan: That handbag I saw you with this evening... Where did you buy it?
Su Li-zhen Chan: Why do you ask?
Chow Mo-wan: It looked so elegant. I want to get one for my wife.
Su Li-zhen Chan: Mr. Chow, you're so good to your wife!
Chow Mo-wan: Not really! My wife is so fussy. Her birthday is some days away. I don't know what to get her. Could you buy one for me to give her?
Su Li-zhen Chan: Maybe she wouldn't want one just exactly the same.
Chow Mo-wan: You're right, I didn't think of that.
Su Li-zhen Chan: A woman would mind.
Chow Mo-wan: Yes, especially since we're neighbors. Do they come in other colors?
Su Li-zhen Chan: I'd have to ask my husband.
Chow Mo-wan: Why?
Su Li-zhen Chan: He bought it for me on a business trip abroad. They aren't on sale here.
Chow Mo-wan: Then never mind.
Su Li-zhen Chan: Actually... I want to ask you something too. Where did you buy your tie?
Chow Mo-wan: I don't know where it came from. My wife buys all my ties.
Su Li-zhen Chan: Really?
Chow Mo-wan: She bought this one on a business trip abroad. It's not on sale here.
Su Li-zhen Chan: What a coincidence!
Chow Mo-wan: Yes.
Su Li-zhen Chan: Actually... My husband has one just like it. He said it was a gift from his boss. So he wears it every day.
Chow Mo-wan: And my wife has a bag just like yours.
Su Li-zhen Chan: I know, I've seen it.
Chow Mo-wan: What are you getting at, actually?
Su Li-zhen Chan: I thought I was the only one who knew.
Adultery has sullied their lives: his wife and her husband are having an affair. "For us to do the same thing," they agree, "would mean we are no better than they are." The key word there is "agree." The fact is, they do not agree. It is simply that neither one has the courage to disagree, and time is passing. He wants to sleep with her and she wants to sleep with him, but they are both bound by the moral stand that each believes the other has taken.
Wong Kar-wai leaves the cheating couple offscreen. Movies about adultery are almost always about the adulterers, but the critic Elvis Mitchell observes that the heroes here are "the characters who are usually the victims in a James M. Cain story." Their spouses may sin in Singapore, Tokyo or a downtown love hotel, but they will never sin on the screen of this movie, because their adultery is boring and commonplace, while the reticence of Chow and Su elevates their love to a kind of noble perfection.
[SIZE=15.555556297302246px]In lesser hands, the finale, where Chow whispers his unheard regrets and feelings into a stone hollow at Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple complex, before sealing them inside with mud, could be absurd, melodramatic. Wong makes it heartbreaking. The cello music, which has been following Chow and Mrs. Chan throughout the film, is called Yumeji's Theme. It is sublime.
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