In the Mood for Love (2000)

PG and I totally agree.  It's really weird because the movie is fundamentally about adultery.  But it's almost the aftermath or the periphery of adultery.  We don't see anything that would be objectionable.  While the movie hides sexuality behind a curtain, we don't have anything that is even remotely sexual, despite the rumors contrary to that.  The only thing that would make this movie not for kids is that it isn't aimed at kids.  It's an adult movie with very little that could be objectionable besides what we bring to the movie.

DIRECTOR:  Wong Kar-Wai

I'm really surprised that I haven't written about this one before.  I showed it to my first film class and they really got into it.  It's also the only Wong Kar-Wai movie I owned before buying the box set.  I've watched it over-and-over again. But it must have been six years since I've watched this film, so I have to write about it.  (Originally, I gave myself a pass to not write about movies that I taught, simply because I often didn't pay attention to the film while I was screening it.  That has since changed.) 

I'm glad that this was the Wong Kar-Wai film that I owned before the set.  It might be my favorite because it is a love story that we really haven't seen before.  I have been, overall, enjoying my Wong Kar-Wai box set, but I've always been disappointed to see Wong Kar-Wai use the Hong Kong storyteller's crutch of relying on violence and coolness.  I don't know why that stuff bugs me so much.  Maybe it is because I'm so familiar with In the Mood for Love.  This is one of those movies that is just pure and vulnerable.  Considering that Wong Kar-Wai's strengths lie when his films get aggressively vulnerable, I don't think he ever does it better than In the Mood for Love.  Even with the other love stories that Wong Kar-Wai has given us, there's always an element of lust.  Maybe that holds true for In the Mood for Love.  But the optimistic part of me would like to think that everything in this movie is done in the preservation of love.  It's not that Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chen don't love each other.  They completely do.  But there's a respect for the value of love.  At least, that's what I choose to believe.

Wong Kar-Wai messes with me a lot in this movie.  If anything, this is a masterclass in how to redirect attention through storytelling.  There's a certain gullible element to the movie because Wong Kar-Wai keeps pulling the same tricks and somehow getting away with it.  The characters will say absolutely sexual and angry things to one another, to only follow up with the notion that this is play-acting; prepping for their inevitable confrontation with their respective spouses.  It's a kind of pornography in a weird way because the movie really doesn't let us see these characters using this practice for actual good.  There is no break with these adulterous spouses.  But that's what makes the actual ending so cryptic.  As I have established, I want to believe that the two have never allowed themselves to have a physical affair.  Instead, they toe that line, allowing each other to be comforts for one another.  On the one hand, one of the key lines in the movie is that they refuse to be like their spouses.  They know that their spouses hold no respect for the value of marriage.  Starting as a support group for the cuckolded, they eventually develop feelings for one another.  In that moment, they do the responsible thing: they separate physically.  Mr. Chow moves to Singapore, knowing that he can't trust himself around Mrs. Chan.  

But there's the hole in the tree.  That story that Chow tells his slimy co-worker implies that there's a secret that even we don't know.  Now, the easy answer (that I choose to believe is correct) is that he whispers his love for Mrs. Chan into the knot of the tree in the temple, burying it forever.  It's tragic, yet keeping with the themes of the story.  But there's the other loose string: the child.  Mrs. Chan, in the three years between Mr. Chow's leaving and his return, has had a child.  And, yeah, it could be her husband's child, which makes her loneliness all the more tragic.  But it also realistically could be Mr. Chow's child.  There is the allowance of hand holding as he leaves her forever.  It's the combination of two things that make that end so darned --yet appropriately --frustrating.  

It's the dual nature of our personalities at play here.  I know that not everyone shares my annoying moralizing when they watch movies, but I get really annoyed when romance films are about forgiving adultery.  Yet the entire film is about holding in that big breath and begging for exhale.  The reason that this movie works for me so well is that they don't have the affair.  But I can't deny that I was so begging for Wong Kar-Wai to find a way to have me justify their infidelity.  It's this beautiful love that can never happen.  And he establishes that it isn't about sex.  There's no heavy breathing scene.  There's no almost scene.  No, it's about two people who have been hurt and the kinship they find in their mutual pain.  They grow from that pain and find a way to survive.  They don't thrive, but they do survive.  And when it is that moment where any other movie would have their protagonists claim a well-earned happiness, they are aware that the happiness would be pervert what they mean to each other and betray who they fundamentally are. It's painful and it's perfect.  I don't know how to work it.

I love that Everything Everywhere All at Once  referenced this movie.  Everything talks about the many choices that we make in the name of happiness and the idea that those two main protagonists find In the Mood for Love the template for "What could have been" is absolutely ideal.  On top of that, I can't and dare-not try to write about this movie without talking about the absolutely perfect visuals that it holds.  Considering that the 2000s were all about excess imagery, this movie holds both bold imagery with a tempered feel to it, matching the plot and the themes of the film.  Both of those people are gorgeous human beings and yet, their behavior is never extreme. We are given the glory of 1962-1966 Hong Kong and it never takes an extreme position.  Instead, the camera lingers on the reddest of reds you'll ever see in a movie. 

As usual, I have a hard time writing about movies I love too much.  It's partially because I don't have sounding boards.  I know.  It's a lame excuse.  But be aware that this movie absolutely destroys.  It's a perfect film and I adore it.