Fa yeung nin wah
花樣年華
**½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras B-
starring Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung
written and directed by Wong Kar-wai
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love wavers between the surface pleasures of gorgeous imagery and narrative play and the crystallization of themes that have been latent in the director’s work for quite some time. The film is almost aggressively evanescent: informational repressions and structural manipulations relentlessly undercut the doomed, strangled love between two Hong Kong neighbours, turning their half-formed relationship into an exquisite torture for both the characters and the audience.
This defacement of our expectations not only creates a potent charge but also reveals the theme common to Wong’s work, that of the erotica of making-do. In exploring the implications of fetishistically replacing the person you can’t have, In the Mood for Love becomes a key film for Wong, one which sets in higher relief the furtive pleasures of many of his protagonists. The film thus vacillates between profundity and irrelevance, playfully stroking our masochistic urges while hinting at larger things through the implications of what feelings and events he chooses to privilege.
The setup couldn’t be more classical. Mrs. Zhen (Maggie Cheung), a secretary, and Mr. Chow (Tony Leung), a newspaper editor, live next door to each other in a crowded Hong Kong apartment circa 1962. Their proximity means that they are constantly bumping into each other; indeed, they moved in on the same day, their possessions intermingling as the movers lose track of whose property belongs to whom. This, to the romantic observer, would appear to be fate; equally so is the fact of their spouses’ constant absence, leaving them alone and lonely on various business trips. Through a series of strange coincidences and erratic happenings, the two neighbours finally put together what ought to be the catalyst for their union: the fact that their spouses are having an affair, right under their noses, using their constant absences as a smokescreen for their hidden romance.
Once that premise is explained, it becomes necessary to reveal the things that Wong does to complicate this very simple premise. Our heroes’ spouses are never revealed on-camera, even when they figure into the scene. We know of their existence largely through the references of the other characters. By contrast, we are largely trapped in Mr. Chow’s and Mrs. Zhen’s lives. Before the affair begins, we are treated to lengthy sequences of their work environments, punctuated by the strange happenings that first cue them to their cheating partners; the film’s total repression of anything outside of the leads’ lives creates an even greater sense that something momentous will happen, as Wong would apparently be exalting the irresistible attraction that we are sure will bust out into a master narrative of love.
But this would be to misinterpret Wong’s intentions: in reality, he is taking a look at a relatively inconsequential moment in his protagonists’ lives. Through their Godot-like absence, the spouses are the ones in control of the space of the film, leaving our heroes to figure out what to do in the minimal room that they have left in which to work. They are clearly hurt by their abandonment by the people they love, but propriety insists that they soldier on regardless, no matter how painful that might be. And it is here where the real drama of In the Mood for Love lies. As Chow and Zhen begin meeting each other–carefully, secretly–we bear witness to two individuals who live in the space between what people can see and what is secretly desired.
While this situation is more stripped-down and claustrophobic than previous Wong efforts, it concentrates into its 90-odd minutes a situation that afflicts the vast majority of his characters: that of being deprived of the thing or person that you desire, and having to create a secondary love out of whatever might be on hand. In Chungking Express, we had the young woman who routinely broke into the apartment of a man she was attracted to so that she might revel in the things that defined him. Happy Together featured a gay relationship that fell apart at the beginning of a trip to Argentina; its central couple has to deal with both the loss of their love and each other while stranded in a foreign land. Fallen Angels revolved around a variety of people who either didn’t know what they wanted or were incapable of having it. Responses to their frustrations ranged from breaking into ice cream trucks to sell what wasn’t theirs to stealing and fixating on the garbage of the impossible love in lieu of their actual affection. In the Mood for Love falls clearly into this pattern, and illuminates the patterns that now obviously stream through his work.
While this is a boon for auteurists seeking to make sense of the director’s work, the furtive nature of In the Mood for Love‘s core relationship threatens to capsize the film with inconsequentiality. To some extent, Wong brilliantly confuses the significance of Chow and Zhen’s relationship. Is it a flyspeck on the glass of propriety, a pointless exercise in denial of what might be the inevitable acceptance of their lot, or is it, after all, the important relationship in the film, regardless of the fact that the absent spouses hold all of the aces? But the director’s total commitment to the oppressive reality of his heroes almost blows their emotions away, to In the Mood for Love‘s detriment.
Wong’s tendency to play God with his characters makes it impossible for us to feel their pain or burgeoning desire. Instead of releasing their feelings onto the screen, he pins them to the board and watches as they wriggle. While infinitely fascinated with his leads’ actions, which range from stoic sobriety to a kind of resistant tenderness, he’s too inhibited to truly identify with their struggle. Better to oppress them with compositions that trap them in space, or compartmentalize them through scenic windows that make us see with eyes that are not theirs. Better to portray their relationship as a terrible inconvenience, something plotted out to look like a series of chance encounters, since a million eyes are watching them. Viewed this way, In the Mood for Love takes great pains to trivialize the feelings of those for whom we should feel the most, and in so doing loses the anchor for a film that simply drifts away from the spectator. We’re grasping for the would-be lovers as they disappear over the horizon.
But while I can’t say that In the Mood for Love is much of a cathartic experience, its development of Wong’s core themes is fascinating on a purely intellectual level. Like no other director, his movies are wrapped up in the consequences of frustration. Whereas most other filmmakers go out of their way to deny the idea, taking as their mission to wishfully blast through the walls of such a prison, Wong instead observes the happenings of the lost and bereft as they carry on regardless. While his need to distance himself from these hapless souls has an unpleasant tendency to reduce them to the entertainingly aberrant, his recording (read: privileging) of their behaviour has few corollaries in all of world cinema, and his non-judgmental acceptance of their quirks is an even scarcer commodity. His latest effort is the culmination of his concerns, finally creating an environment that predicates such frustration and indicting, however faintly, the conditions that lead to his heroes’ woes. Originally published: February 9, 2000.
THE DVD
by Bill Chambers Beating The Criterion Collection to the punch by a few weeks, Seville’s DVD release of In the Mood for Love, available exclusively in Canada, contains features separate from the Criterion version and will thus be of interest to completists in addition to those seeking a lower-priced alternative to Criterion’s 2-disc set. Seville offers the film in a transfer with similar technical specs: a 1.77:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer (retailers report an unverified aspect ratio of 1.66:1 for Criterion’s In the Mood for Love) and 2.0 Dolby stereo sound. Seville’s source print shows nicks in places and the image lacks definition at times, but the overall visual presentation is very rich indeed. I was impressed by the audio, which has the fullness of an exquisitely mastered CD, if not of the 5.1 mix heard in theatres. Dialogue is occasionally isolated in the left or right mains to dramatic effect, though for the most part, the mix is more crystalline than showy.
The highlight of the extras is the artsy 18-minute featurette “A Note on the Making of In the Mood for Love“. In English interviews (all three participants are quite fluent), Wong Kar-wai, Tony Leung, and Maggie Cheung discuss the film’s long production schedule, Wong’s unusual methods of improvisation (“To have a script and then shoot it is very boring”), and even where the title came from (Wong was browsing through Bryan Ferry records at HMV!). Leung, a veteran of Wong’s oeuvre, says that he was just happy to know his character’s name this time around. Capping off the disc: an animated photo gallery (set to the ubiquitous refrain of Michael Galasso’s score); detailed cast and crew bios; production notes (“The World of In the Mood for Love“) on the costumes, hair, and food from the film (we learn that the restaurant scenes were shot at The Goldfinch, whose décor hasn’t changed since the 1960s); and trailers for three other Seville titles: Eat Drink Man Woman, Chinese Box, and Three Seasons.
98 minutes; PG; 1.77:1 (16×9-enhanced); Cantonese DD 2.0 (Stereo); English, French subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Seville
