In The Mood For Love | What's Love After All?

Set in 1962, in Hong Kong, the romance melodrama begins with Chow and Su Li-zhen, married individuals but not to each other coincidentally moving in as neighbors in the same building. She works as a secretary in a shipping agency while he is a newspaper editor who also holds large dreams of making it big as an adventure author. 

It starts on a slow pace showing their daily routines. Identical gestures by the protagonists wearing a different suit or dress almost every time we see them performing the same actions tells us that days are flying by. On most lonely nights she is seen carrying take-away noodles from a local food stand. In a while you get to know that both their spouses are out of city due to work.

A friendly relationship grows between them. Out on a dinner one day, the purse that Li-zhen is carrying and the tie that Chow is wearing reveals something to them – their respective partners having an affair with each other. The discovery leaves them both shocked and fraught as they are trying to grapple with the situation.

Drawn together by the common thread of abandonment and betrayal they have revenge in mind though it’s never shown on screen. They go out on dinners where they rehearse conversations in which they play each other’s spouses. It’s all done in a manner for Li-zhen to practice how she’ll confront her husband about his infidelity. The role-playing affords them the only moments of physical flirtation they allow themselves. Though trapped in the same room by circumstance they don’t share a bed. With the societal morales dictating their relationship they are secretive in their weakly platonic moments till they eventually repress their feelings. Insisting that they won’t be “like them,” they play on the edges of an affair. It’s a love story that never quite happens. As Chow says “he only wanted to understand how it must have started out between them” referring to their spouses.  

This is a love story whose intensity arises more from the settings than actual display of skin that in fact stays covered most of the time. Sheer Brilliance by the Cinematographer! It captures emotions, gestures and hints at unexpressed feelings. Smoke filling the screen; cups of coffee; passageways; door frames, window grids, bed sides the visual frames are ravishing. With its aching musical sound track the movie leaves you asking for more. The actress looks gorgeous in those stunning body hugging dresses. 

It ends with Chow whispering a secret into a hole in one of the stone walls of the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. The secret sealed forever. 

The film is intelligently conceived narrating a heart wrenching tale of unrequited love.

What’s love after all? A distraction, a fleeting promise, an unbreakable bond? 

How do you remember love after all? As instances of conflict, moments of warmth, flashes of passion? 

Why love after all? 

(Originally written on September 30th 2017)