You won't find the title song "In the Mood for Love" in the film of the same name. Likewise, the English subtitles running in this Chinese film flash a bit faster than you can read it. The manners and mannerisms of this set piece in the 1960s also stretch your patience. That being said, "In the Mood for Love" is a worthwhile venture into a realm of suppressed lovemaking few of us are prepared for. "Remains of the Day", about an English butler and his maidservant, ironically written by a Japanese writer, comes closes but that film elicited a much sterner civility. True, "In the Mood for Love" is about disappointments and betrayals and about integrity in spite of human longings. But it is also about how the aggrieved couple, Mrs. Chun and Mr. Chau (well performed by Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung), try to maintain a normalcy that makes it the most interesting part of this film. They do so under the watchful eye of two old-fashion Chinese couples who are their landlords and fellow boarders. The repeated trips down a dank passage to the noodle shops merely reinforces a mundane life that must be lived whereas the meetings in the alleyway are done surreptitiously to avoid the appearance of improper behavior. In one of the funniest scenes, the couple must wait it out in Mr. Chau's room until a prolonged Mahjong game is completed in the next room so that Mrs. Chun can be whisked out unnoticed. The couple also tried mightily to abide by their agreement that "they will not be like them". This is taken to a drastic level when Mr. Chau decides to rent out a motel room (interestingly with a dark red background) where they can write martial arts cartoon features they hope to sell. Even alone in their private room, they sublimate their own desires by running through a make believe exercise in which Mrs. Chun confronts her husband with his infidelity. But what the film hints in its visuals are human longings - the curvaceous hips of Mrs. Chun, the rising cigarette smoke against the fluorescent lights as Mr. Chau writes his cartoons, the clock in the newsroom that signals appointments kept or not, and the unseen faces of their respective spouses who have betrayed them. The film also has reminders of morality - the crescendo staccato sounds when the couple is about to do something morally right and the basa nova like melody when they are tempted. The final scenes are rushed and don't do justice to the preceding slow-paced encounters but they do highlight the only form of lovemaking Mrs. Chun and Mr. Chau can embark upon - envisioning a love with so many opportunities, yet never to be consummated.
Review of In the Mood for Love
