Country:
Hong Kong
Recognizable Faces:
Tony Leung
Maggie Cheung
Directed by:
Wong Kar-Wai
The only negative feeling I have towards In The Mood For Love is jealousy. I have seen many movies of Wong Kar-Wai, many times each and In The Mood For Love is the high point of his own high flying career. You've figured it out by now, it's awesome. Top-10-of-all-time material if you ask me.
Why?
First of all, the storyline is gripping, realistic and extraordinary at the same time. Su Li Zhen (Cheung) and Chow Mo Wang (Leung) are neighbors. They are both married, but both isolated from their spouse because of long work hours and infidelities. Both of them find each other in the trail of their spouses cheating and from there, a blossoming friendship grows into love and into...into this beautiful, amazing moment where you desire someone, but you are torn within and find every good reasons no to go forward and embrace the power of your feelings.
It's a love story about unsaid, repressed feelings, so it's supposed to be long and painful, but it's not. Wong Kar-Wai finds so many ways to heighten the drama through the mechanics of cinema, it's not even funny. First of all through time. Long shots accentuate despair and meditative state. Then, music also is recurring like in a nightmare. Sometimes melancholic, sometimes hopeful, the music of In The Mood For Love in superb and exemplify the vicious circle of solitude both characters experiment and the sudden change shows how they are given a chance to redemption. Editing is also made like small paragraphs of the story, which give it a surprisingly high pace for such a contemplative movie.
Maggie Cheung is the undisputed star of the movie, she's beautiful, classy and restrained enough to be helpless. Tony Leung is also very good, maybe not the natural talent of Cheung, but he's giving it all as the desperate Chow. In The Mood For Love is a graceful and swing, a killshot, something you can never repeat in it's entirety. That's why I'm jealous. It's a jewel of cinema and a jewel of storytelling. I can only bow. It's not the most edgy movie, but for those who can get tension, it's something beautiful and unique.
SCORE: 99%
