In the Mood for Love

Drama, Romance | 2001 | PG. 1hr 38min
CAST: Maggie Cheung, Tony Chiu Wai Leung, Szu-Ying Chien DIRECTOR: Kar Wai Wong SILVER SCREEN SOCIETY | MAR 17, 2023

Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite--until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching musical soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past decade of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong's redoubtable career.

Movie

Reviews

"The film is gorgeous, dripping with texture and sensuality and, well, mood."

Christy Lemire, Associated Press

"It's not what's present in the image that makes us desire to see this film again and again, but rather, the absence that haunts it."

Amy Taubin, Sight & Sound

"A stylistic tour de force, one that wordlessly emotes and wears its emotions on its literal silk sleeves."

Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle