In the Mood for Love
Pretty much out of nothing (more like an inexplicable rush of depression that I had nobody to talk to yesterday), I decided to start watching a romantic film for dinner. I knew that “In the Mood for Love” is partially about absent spouses and somehow I felt very close to that this day.
The problem is that when you start watching something really, really good, you cannot possibly stop. “In the Mood for Love” was that way. I had laundry to take care of and hated the interruption, but I had no choice and quickly folded my laundry so I’ll be able to continue watching.
“In the Mood for Love” is something for the evening, a film to watch alone when your heart is ready for the artificial emptiness of Maggie Cheung’s ever-changing wardrobe. As for myself, I am completely, completely in love with it; perhaps one of the reasons why the film strikes me visually is the incredible elegance – but for whom? For the husband who never looks at her? Or for the man who looks at her but she is not supposed to look at? There is a beautiful irony in how she, dressed up prettily, walks through dark streets and brings back noodles in a simple looking bottle.
No matter how weird Maggie Cheung’s hair looks, her wonderful self is absolutely wonderful together with Tony Leung, and I cannot imagine any two other actors who could have pulled off these roles so splendidly. Both of them seemed like they were made for this movie – or the movie made for them.
But for me, the most fascinating thing about the film was how the two characters talk to each other and re-enact imaginative scenes. At first, they play their spouses and how they met, but later they play scenes of their own lives, or how they would face their spouses. It’s absolutely beyond me why I have never seen this kind of “real life play” in such a relationship movie before, after all, I do that about every single day. I actually imagine scenes like “How would he react if I said this? If I were there and did that, what would he say?” and play them out in my mind. Showing how these two characters play these scenes is perhaps the most wonderful way of depicting their closeness – there is something amazingly beautiful in which Maggie Cheung’s slightly cold-looking character loses her composure when she is with this man, and only him.
I loved the movie, and I can imagine that I would place it higher than any Wong Kar-Wai film I am going to see… it was so much more impressive than Chungking Express already.