In The Mood For Love

The rain outside. Thunder. Sparkles of rain you can hear. And as you watch on the screen, Maggie Cheung's evocative face dissolves into a hundred emotions. In The Mood For Love is a masterpiece. It's in the list of Empire Online's greatest 100 movies ever.

I started watching this movie on Saturday. It wasn't raining then. And I finished watching it now, on a Sunday. Stretching to a little more than 2 hours, the movie feels like 4 hours. I don't watch run-of-the-mill movies. I watch a lot of movies that may be called 'art-house' or offbeat or non-mainstream or whatever it may be called. I have come across a lot of beautiful movies because of this openness. I was fascinated by In The Mood For Love because it had an Asian and more so, a Chinese connection. But just like Amour, this will be one of those movies that is rendered beautifully on screen, capturing all the nuances of emotions in an understated and subtle way. But it is a movie that will put me to sleep.

Here's what IMDB describes:

Two neighbors, a woman and a man, form a strong bond after both suspect extramarital activities of their spouses. However, they agree to keep their bond platonic so as not to commit similar wrongs.

The key thing here *spoiler alert* is that they suspect their spouses of having an affair with each other. Drawn by this strange bond, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) form a platonic friendship that belies the strong tension and intimacy between them. While that tension is beautifully captured, their spouses are never portrayed. Only their voices. Their noisy and nosy neighbors form the only lively part of the movie. 

So what happens? Leung and Cheung exchange glances. Have dinners in restaurants. Stand next to each other in pouring rain. Pass each other by on their way to buy noodles. And Cheung helps Leung to write a series on manga. 

We watch them feel. And I feel for them. Feel for watching such excruciating beauty in such slowness. Mistake me not. The film is beautiful and I know and understand that not all movies have to be fast. But this made me sleep. Sophoric. And may be that's just me. Maybe I wasn't in the mood for love. You can watch the full movie here or buy the CD.

 

Verdict: One of the masterpieces of world cinema. This was sadly not for me. 

Rating: 3/5