In the Mood for Love
In the Mood for Love (花樣年華, lit. "Flower Like Years") is a 2000 Hong Kong movie written and directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu Wai.
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Plot outline
Hong Kong 1962, Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), a journalist, rents a room from Mr. Koo. He will live there with his wife, a hotel receptionist. It is sheer coincidence that he moves in the same day that Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) moves in next door, at Mrs Suen's place. Lizhen works as a secretary to Mr. Ho (Lai Chin), the boss of a shipping company. It is also a coincidence that both of them are moving in without help from their spouses. Chow's wife is working her shift at the hotel at the time of the move. Lizhen's husband, Mr Chan, is away on a business trip; he works for a Japanese company, and is often abroad. Despite having convivial and neighbourly landlords, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan often find themselves alone and lonely in their respective rooms.
Neither of them ever finds out how it began, but Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan discover that their respective spouses are having an affair together. The discovery shocks both of them. Chow, feeling hurt and wishing to understand how the affair happened, begins finding excuses to spend time with Mrs. Chan. They begin rehearsing what they will say to their spouses when they confront them with what they know. Then Mr. Chow invites Mrs. Chan to help him with a martial-arts series that he is writing for the newspaper. Their meetings are discreet, but people begin to notice. There seems no possibility that they, too, will drift into an affair. But Mrs. Chan's emotional reticence begins to haunt Mr. Chow and he finds his feelings changing. It is almost like being in love.
Unique artistic expressions
There were two unique artistic expressions in this movie. One is the use of seemingly repetitive scenes and the other is that certain sequences that look like one scene but they were actually a collage of numerous encounters of the two main characters in the movie. The techniques gave the audience the impression that these two characters were doing the same thing over and over again everyday over a very long period of time. However, if you pay attention to the dress (qipao) that Maggie Cheung was wearing, you would notice that she wore a different dress in every single shot in those sequences. Obviously they are not the same shot edited over and over again but actually artistic shots with different costume and make up for each shot.
Awards
- Best Actor, 2000 Cannes Film Festival
- Best Foreign Film, 2001 César Award
- Screen International Award, 2000 European Film Awards
Sequel
In 2004, Wong Kar-wai released a sequel to the movie: 2046.
See also
External link
- Official site (http://www.wkw-inthemoodforlove.com/eng/homepg/homepg.asp)
- In the Mood for Love (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118694/) at the Internet Movie Database
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Categories: 2000 films | Romance films