In the Mood for Love – Wong Kar Wai. (2000)

In this week’s film session, we watched one of Wong Kar Wai’s film, In the Mood for Love. Few things I can say about this movie, besides an outstanding soundtrack, was the framing of each scenes, use of mirrors and long, narrow hallways, and the colour scheme throughout the movie.

In the Mood for Love contained a lot of scenes (mostly throughout the film) that seemed really congested and packed. A good 15-20mins of the opening scene was spent narrow hallways as Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) and Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) move their stuff in their new rooms. The narrow hallways became the boundaries of the frame, as the focus is set on the characters, and their emotions. However, because of the narrow hallways, which is constant throughout the film, the screen became cluttered and messy, with too much stuff going on. It was a bit hard to focus at times, especially when the scenes are set outside the house their renting in. However, when it gets to places like their office, or the restaurants, it still seemed a bit cluttered, but there’s more room for the eyes to breathe from the visual aesthetics.

Second thing I’ve noticed from the film is Wong Kar Wai’s use of windows, mirrors and doorways as a way of “observing” the characters in the film. The audience then becomes someone from the outside looking in – an observer, rather than having full participation in the film. For the majority of the film, the camera is either looking through the film, and not exactly directly at the characters. At one point, when Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan are talking to their partners, we don’t see them at all. When Mrs. Chan went to Mr. Chow’s room asking for another copy of the weekly newspaper, his wife answers the door, but we don’t see her. We hear her talk, but visually, we don’t see her. We know that their presence are in the film, but they are no where to be seen.

Besides the fact that I’ve seen Tony Leung from another of Wong Kar Wai’s films, Happy Together (1997), that was screened during Introduction to Cinema Studies subject in my 1st year, it was refreshing to see him in a different role and for him to pull it off. In conclusion, I have nothing else to say about this film besides the fact that it was just well executed, and Wong Kar Wai definitely has surprised me with his style. It was simply amazing.