In The Mood For Love FOW

Historical & Political Views Notes

Quick Background Information:

The international success of Chungking Express (1994) required Hong Kong filmmakers to come to terms with Wong’s success in recasting the grammatical norm of local cinema: his brand of interior monologues, step-printed slow motion, and other techniques were widely adopted—sometimes even parodied—in genres as diverse as thrillers, romances, and comedies. His thirst for innovation hit its stride with Ashes of Time (1994), but his costly, improvisatory working method (shooting without a script, leaving footage on the cutting room floor) raised outrage in a recession that had hit the local film industry in 1993.

In the Mood for Love was supposed to be a low-budget quickie (like Chungking Express) that would help Wong’s company through its cash flow problems in the wake of the costly Happy Together (1997). It stars Maggie Cheung Man-yuk and Tony Leung Chiu-wai as two neighbours who discover that their respective spouses are having an affair. The original plan, to divide the film between scenes into the sixties and scenes in the nineties, was partially inspired by Liu Yi-chang’s short story “Dui Dao” (a.k.a. “Intersection” or “Tête-Bêche”). The story alternates between the roamings and stream-of-consciousness thoughts of two contrasting characters—one an old immigrant from Shanghai, the other a young girl. As the adaptation became completely set in Hong Kong in the sixties, Wong again began running over budget and far behind schedule.

Links Throughout the film... 

In the mood for love is truly a film Noir, due to the aesthetic atmosphere of colours of mood and motion, and as well as the use of mirrors and reflections of the protagonists. 

But the link between the two films is a certain kind of claustrophobic romanticism as Wong abandons his favourite structure of crisscrossing disparate characters and parallel plotlines, opting instead for one that focuses on the interaction between two characters. Mood’s emphasis on the sensuous texture of the image, the static quality of the compositions, and the elegant succession of concealed spaces may be related to Wong’s choice of a cinematographer: shortly after shooting began, Christopher Doyle was replaced by the more visually placid Mark Li Ping-bin, a longtime collaborator of Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-Hsien.

The Clausthropia Atmosphere, Feeling, and Motion

Indeed, the cramped rooms, narrow hallways, and limited perspectives are all metaphors for secrets hidden behind facades, and passion suppressed by the constrictions of the time, which are also suggested by the series of extraordinarily high-collared floral qipao dresses that Li-Zhen wears. One way or another, Wong’s films are about submerged passion and hidden desires. But here the confinement is both sociological and psychological.

We see only the backs of Li-Zhen's husband and Mo-wan’s wife; their voices are only heard off-screen. The absence of the spouses allows Li-Zhen and Mo-wan to “become” their doubles (a conceit first signified by the identical ties and handbags). The process is completed when they role-play as the adulterers, a desperate performance designed to illuminate the origins of the affair. The use of doubles as a structuring principle in Mood can also be traced to “Tête-Bêche,” which is a philatelic term, referring to a pair of postage stamps, one inverted in relation to the other. The prominence of mirrors in the film doubtlessly contributes to this motif, at times subtly suggesting that two couples inhabit the same space. (Wong’s script-shirking methods enable repeated modification of his work, including the removal of scenes that don’t fit strictly into the “Tête-Bêche” binary structure.)

Reference Sources:

https://www.google.com/search?q=in+the+mood+for+love&sxsrf=ALeKk00k775aMpQpxtsABxA_037NgYmAwg:1615048152741&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwijtsGbi5zvAhW7QkEAHQJpCrIQ_AUoAXoECBMQAw&biw=639&bih=608#imgrc=YIsoxLq9MGPDkM

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/197-in-the-mood-for-love