In the Mood for Love

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For the album by Jo Stafford, see In the Mood for Love (album).
In the Mood for Love
Traditional 花樣年華
Simplified 花样年华
Mandarin Huāyàng niánhuá
Directed by Wong Kar-wai
Produced by Wong Kar-wai
Written by Wong Kar-wai
Starring Tony Leung
Maggie Cheung
Music by Michael Galasso
Shigeru Umebayashi
Cinematography Christopher Doyle
Pin Bing Lee
Editing by William Chang
Distributed by USA Films (US)
Release date(s) 29 September 2000 (2000-09-29) (HK)
2 February 2001 (US)
Running time 98 minutes
94 minutes (Poland)
Country Hong Kong
Language Cantonese
Shanghainese
French
Gross revenue $12,854,953 (worldwide)

In the Mood for Love is a 2000 Hong Kong film directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung. The film premiered on 20 May 2000, at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival,[1][2] where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or.

The film's original Chinese title, meaning 'the age of blossoms' or 'the flowery years' – Chinese metaphor for the fleeting time of youth, beauty and love – derives from a song of the same name by Zhou Xuan from a 1946 film. The English title derives from a Bryan Ferry cover of the song "I'm in the Mood for Love" that is also used in the film. The film forms the second part of an informal trilogy, together with the first part Days of Being Wild[3] (released in 1991) and the last part 2046 (released in 2004).

Contents

[edit] Plot

The film takes place in Hong Kong, 1962. Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung), a journalist, rents a room in an apartment of a building on the same day as Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung), a secretary from a shipping company. They become next-door neighbours. Each has a spouse who works and often leaves them alone on overtime shifts. Despite the presence of a friendly Shanghainese landlady, Mrs. Suen, and bustling, mahjong-playing neighbours, Chow and Su often find themselves alone in their rooms. Their lives continue to intersect in everyday situations: a recurring motif in this film is the loneliness of eating alone, and the film documents the leads' chance encounters, each making their individual trek to the street noodle stall.

Chow and Su each nurse suspicions about their own spouse's fidelity; each comes to the conclusion that their spouses have been seeing each other. Su wonders aloud how their spouse's affair might have began, and together, Su and Chow re-enact what they imagine might have happened.

Chow soon invites Su to help him write a martial arts serial for the papers. As their relationship develops, their neighbours begin to take notice. In the context of a socially conservative 1960s' Hong Kong, friendships between men and women bear scrutiny. Chow rents a hotel room away from the apartment where he and Su can work together without attracting attention. The relationship between Chow and Su is platonic, as there is the suggestion that they would be degraded if they stooped to the level of their spouses. As time passes, however, they acknowledge that they have developed feelings for each other. Chow leaves Hong Kong for a job in Singapore. He asks Su to go with him; Chow waits for her at the hotel room for a time, and then leaves. She can be seen rushing down the stairs of her apartment, only to arrive at the empty hotel room, too late to join Chow.

The next year, Su goes to Singapore and visits Chow's apartment where she calls Chow, who is working for a Singaporean newspaper, but she remains silent on the phone when Chow picks up. Later, Chow realises she has visited his apartment after seeing a lipstick-stained cigarette butt in his ashtray. While dining with a friend, Chow relays a story about how in older times, when a person had a secret that could not be shared, he would instead go atop a mountain, make a hollow in a tree, whisper the secret into that hollow and cover it with mud.

Three years later, Su visits with her former landlady, Mrs. Suen. Mrs. Suen is about to emigrate to the United States, and Su enquires about whether the apartment is available for rent. Some time later, Chow returns to visit his landlords, the Koos. He finds they have emigrated to the Philippines. He asks about the Suen family next door, and the new owner tells him a woman and her son are now living next door. He leaves without realising Su is the lady living next door.

The film ends at Siem Reap, Cambodia, where Chow is seen visiting the Angkor Wat. At the site of a ruined monastery, he whispers for some time into a hollow in a ruined wall, before plugging the hollow with mud.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Production

While set in Hong Kong, a portion of the filming (like outdoor and hotel scenes) was shot in Bangkok, Thailand. The film also incorporates footage of Angkor Wat, Cambodia. The film took 15 months to shoot.[2] The cinematographer Christopher Doyle, for whom the film was the sixth collaboration with Wong Kar-wai,[4] had to leave the film when production went over schedule and was replaced by Mark Lee Ping Bin.[2]

Wong states he was very influenced by Hitchcock's Vertigo while making this film, and compares Tony Leung's film character to James Stewart's:

"the role of Tony in the film reminds me of Jimmy Stewart's in Vertigo. There is a dark side to this character. I think it's very interesting that most of the audience prefers to think that this is a very innocent relationship. These are the good guys, because their spouses are the first ones to be unfaithful and they refuse to be. Nobody sees any darkness in these characters – and yet they are meeting in secret to act out fictitious scenarios of confronting their spouses and of having an affair. I think this happens because the face of Tony Leung is so sympathetic. Just imagine if it was John Malkovich playing this role. You would think, 'This guy is really weird.' It's the same in Vertigo. Everybody thinks James Stewart is a nice guy, so nobody thinks that his character is actually very sick."[5]

[edit] Title song

The title track Hua Yang De Nian Hua is a song by famous singer Zhou Xuan from the Solitary Island period. The 1946 song, used in Wong's film, is a paean to a happy past and an oblique metaphor for the darkness of Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Wong also set the song to his 2000 short film, named Hua Yang De Nian Hua after the track.

[edit] Soundtrack

[edit] Box office

In the Mood for Love made HK$8,663,227 during its Hong Kong run.

On 2 February 2001, the film opened in six North American theatres, earning $113,280 ($18,880 per screen) in its first weekend. It finished its North American run with a gross of $2,738,980.[7]

The film's total worldwide box office gross was US$12,854,953.[7]

[edit] Critical reception

[edit] Lists

In 2000, Empire ranked the film No. 42 in its "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" list.[8] It was ranked 95th on "100 Best Films from 1983 to 2008" by Entertainment Weekly.[9] In November 2009, Time Out New York ranked the film as the fifth-best of the decade, calling it the "consummate unconsummated love story of the new millennium."[10]

[edit] Awards

[edit] See also

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[edit] References

  1. ^ IMDb: release dates
  2. ^ a b c A review/essay of the DVD set released by Criterion Collection by David Ng
  3. ^ "Director's Statement". In the Mood for Love official website. Archived from the original on 7 August 2010. http://www.webcitation.org/5rnrIjqUL. Retrieved 7 August 2010. 
  4. ^ "Christopher Doyle (Cinematographer)". In the Mood for Love official website. Archived from the original on 7 August 2010. http://www.webcitation.org/5rnsPPxWJ. Retrieved 7 August 2010. 
  5. ^ Chute, David (15 February 2001). "Unforgettable". LA Weekly. Archived from the original on 7 August 2010. http://www.webcitation.org/5rns3JCtc. Retrieved 7 August 2010. 
  6. ^ "Notes on the Music". In the Mood for Love official website. Archived from the original on 7 August 2010. http://www.webcitation.org/5rnsWauIx. Retrieved 7 August 2010. 
  7. ^ a b "In the Mood for Love (2001)". Box Office Mojo. Internet Movie Database. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=inthemoodforlove.htm. Retrieved 7 August 2010. 
  8. ^ "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema | 42. In The Mood For Love". Empire. 2010. Archived from the original on 7 August 2010. http://www.webcitation.org/5rnrlJHSu. Retrieved 7 August 2010. 
  9. ^ http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20207076_20207079_20206927_5,00.html
  10. ^ "The TONY top 50 movies of the decade". Time Out New York (739). 26 November – 2 December 2009. http://newyork.timeout.com/arts-culture/film/56542/the-tony-top-50-movies-of-the-decade?page=0,5. Retrieved 2 December 2009. 
  11. ^ a b c "Festival de Cannes: In the Mood for Love". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/5208/year/2000.html. Retrieved 10 October 2009. 

[edit] External links

Films directed by Wong Kar-wai
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