In the Mood for Love

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Film Description

You could get giddy on the heat of Wong Kar-Wai's seventh feature, as Maggie Cheung fans herself at a mah-jongg game or Tony Leung floats past her, face a glow of desire, on the stairway to the noodle bar. Shot as a series of interiors, it follows Cheung's secretary as she and Leung' s newspaper editor become neighbours, realise that their respective partners are having affairs and slowly become mired in their own unexpected love.

Film Information

DVD Extras

Original theatrical trailer; star & director filmographies; stills gallery.

Technical Details

Film Media

2 Stills

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1 Trailer

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Reviews & Articles

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Review by Chris Jones on 1st March 2001

A visual and aural masterpiece, food for the soul and enlightening for the mind, Wong Kar-Wai’s very loose, long awaited sequel to the sublime Days of Being Wild, is one of the very finest films to be released in the UK over the past few years.

This is a deceptively simple tale beautifully told. Two people (Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung) are drawn to each other by the gradual realisation that their respective partners (his wife and her husband) are having a clandestine affair. Clearly damaged by this knowledge, their relationship tantalisingly develops as a series of slight encounters that build from initial wary friendship to respect, before ultimately becoming far more.

Wong Kar-Wai films his scenes, either in winding alleyways, plush hotel corridors or the cluttered office where Leung’s character works, in fluid, stunningly composed takes. Cut hypnotically to an entirely appropriate, carefully chosen soundtrack (long-time admirers of the director will recognise this as a key characteristic of his work) the overall effect is like a languorous daydream that you do not ever want to end.

Be warned, though. The final sequence packs a powerful emotional punch if you have been watching carefully, have a heart, and have ever experienced the pain of unrequited love.

Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, two major stars completely in tune with their director’s painstaking working methods, are both on top form. At a recent Guardian interview, Ms. Cheung explained the difficulties of the shoot, with Wong demanding constant re-takes over a period of more than a year due to a variety of unforeseen technical and artistic problems. No matter. Unlike other films made in comparable circumstances, the result appears seamless: performances, camera movement and above all, the perfect marriage of mise-en-scene and sound.

Few directors, if any, have ever captured the lazy afternoon heat, or the languorous patterns of wafting cigarette smoke so perfectly. Equally, the sheeting rain of a snap rainstorm or the harsh, blinding daylight of midday is brilliantly captured.

Destined to be one of the all time great movies of unrequited love, it is certainly on a par with Max Ophuls’ Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948, also available on video). Wong Kar-Wai creates the same aching sense of lost opportunity and tragic loss of a moment in time that can never be recaptured, but in purely visual and aural terms. In other words, this is pure cinema and anyone unwise enough not to experience the cumulative effect of this mesmerising masterpiece would surely feel the same sense of acute loss as the characters in the film! Do not miss…

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Review by Kevin Harley on 16th March 2001

You could get giddy on the heat of Wong Kar-Wai’s seventh feature, as Maggie Cheung fans herself at a mah-jongg game or Tony Leung floats past her, face a glow of desire, on the stairway to the noodle bar. Shot as a series of interiors, it follows Cheung’s secretary as she and Leung’s newspaper editor become neighbours, realise that their respective partners are having affairs and slowly become mired in their own unexpected love. The plot unfolds in delicate, sensual visual wisps ­ Leung’s oiled hair, Cheung’s slinky dresses, a stream of cigarette smoke ­ but it’s the fine details, the cumulative emotional resonance of recurring motifs, that counts more than the action. Wong makes a meal out of the cinematic language of longing that his films are steeped in here; it’s so good you’ll want to eat it.

Review by anonymous on 12th May 2001

The plot unfolds in delicate, sensual visual wisps ­ Leung’s oiled hair, Cheung’s slinky dresses, a stream of cigarette smoke ­ but it’s the fine details, the cumulative emotional resonance of recurring motifs, that counts more than the action. Wong makes a meal out of the cinematic language of longing that his films are steeped in here; it’s so good you’ll want to eat it.

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Article - "Chungking Express" by Paul Scott
Monday 14th June 2004

“We may not know each other, but we could be friends some day.” Such thoughts encapsulate the bittersweet, time-shifted melancholy that Wong Kar Wai brings to his collage of pre-handover Hong Kong – two almost overlapping stories illuminated and made romantic by a ca...  View article in full

Article - "Wong Kar-Wai" by Michael Brooke
Sunday 12th December 2004

David Lynch once said that film-making is like building a bridge out of little glass strands, a metaphor that fits Wong Kar-Wai's work better than most. Not only does it combine apt impressions of poised delicacy and scintillating imagery, but it also reflects Wong'...  View article in full

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