The Films of Wong Kar-wai: In the Mood for Love

Hong Kong, 2000
Directed by Wong Kar-wai

In the Mood for Love took a turbulent road to its completed form. Wong originally envisioned a film set in mainland China in the mid-20th century titled Summer in Beijing, to be a triptych of stories similar to his Chungking Express and Fallen Angels. Eventually he realized that shooting a film in China set during that time period would be too difficult because of vigilant Chinese censors, and relocated to Hong Kong, also narrowing his focus to only one story - a love story. In the Mood for Love took 15 months to shoot, an unusually lengthy production, especially for a film with such an intimate focus. Wong shot largely without a script, improvising, creating and re-creating the story as he went along. The post-production was, by all reports I've read, rushed and confusing, with the film barely completed in time for its premiere. Enough footage was cut out to have made an entirely different film, and perhaps a radically different one than the final product. For all the chaos of its creation, you'd expect In the Mood for Love to be haphazard or unfocused, if not an outright disaster - but it's not. Actually, In the Mood for Love is among the most controlled, elegantly composed films I've ever seen. Every shot and every edit is purposeful and beautiful, and contributes to a whole that is basically perfect.

Like Wong's earlier Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love takes place in 1960s Hong Kong. Two married couples, the Chows and the Chans, move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Separately, Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) begin to suspect that their spouses are having an affair with each other. They form a tentative friendship, trying to figure out why they were betrayed by those closest to them, and finding some solace in a sympathetic confidant. Quickly it becomes clear that more feeling exists between them than just sympathy, but they both deny it and vow not to be like their cheating spouses. They find excuses to spend time together, Mrs. Chan helps Mr. Chow write the martial arts novel he's long dreamed of making. Though their relationship remains platonic, eventually they can no longer ignore their growing feelings and decide to stop seeing each other.

In the Mood for Love is maximalist in style but minimalist in its approach to character and story. There is little in the way of traditional plot development or exposition. We learn about the main characters from brief snatches of dialogue, their expressions and body language. Wong's films usually contain voiceover from the characters, communicating their stream of thoughts, but In the Mood for Love eschews any narration - we must guess what these people are thinking and how they feel, since they rarely communicate it directly. The characters of In the Mood for Love are often situated within doorways or windows, or partially obscured from the camera by walls or other people. I felt like I was spying on them, and even caught myself trying to peer around a corner to get a better glimpse (a sure sign that I was engaged by the film). Watching In the Mood for Love is trying to solve a mystery, where each gesture, each polite conversation is loaded with more meaning than is apparent on the surface. Wong's decision to position his characters within frames also expresses their entrapment - within marriages where they're been betrayed, within a society that is quick to gossip, and within themselves and their own principles, noble as they may be.

While Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan don't express their feelings, the film does it for them. In the Mood for Love is gorgeously expressive. Shigeru Umebayashi's stirring strings score and Christopher Doyle's colorful cinematography communicate their yearning and their lovesickness. Mundane sequences, like Mrs. Chan going out for noodles, are made achingly beautiful through the music and camerawork. All of Wong's films are more musical than literary in their structure - they are built on repetitions and refrains instead of A-to-B plot developments - and in their impact, which is more emotional and visceral than intellectual. Wong has stated that if Chungking Express is pop music, than In the Mood for Love is chamber music - which seems a perfect comparison to me. It is simple, elegant, and melancholy.

All this stunning artistry would have a hollow center if Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan's relationship didn't work, but Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung have tremendous chemistry together. Their beauty is certainly a part of it - Tony Leung makes smoking look cool again, and watching Maggie Cheung sashay about in her various form-fitting dresses is mesmerizing. Both Leung and Cheung would have been terrific actors in the silent film era - they express great depth and subtlety with very little dialogue, mostly through their eyes and their posture.

Ultimately, In the Mood for Love is difficult to write about. Words don't really capture its hypnotic effect - this is a film whose power comes less from its ideas and more from how the music, the editing, the camerawork and the performances draw you into its mood, and into sympathy with two good-hearted but very private and very lonely people. I've seen it three times now, and each viewing has cast a spell on me, unbroken from beginning to end. It's a masterpiece of filmmaking, one of the very best films of the past 20 years.

The Films of Wong Kar-wai: Fallen Angels

Hong Kong, 1995
Directed by Wong Kar-wai

Wong Kar-wai originally conceived his two-part Chungking Express as three stories, but once the first two were developed, he decided that they were enough for a full film and cut out the third. This third story, about the relationship between a hitman and his female partner, developed into his next film. Fallen Angels could be seen as a continuation of Chungking Express - both are split into two stories, take place in the same Hong Kong neighborhood, and revolve around similar themes. But Fallen Angels is also a darker, weirder, more stylistically experimental film than its predecessor - the night to Chungking Express's day.

The first story is about a hitman (Leon Lai) and his partner (Michelle Reis). She tells him where his next hit is, collects cash for him, and cleans his apartment hideout, but they hardly ever meet in person. Despite wanting to keep their partnership an impersonal one, they grow infatuated with each other. Both characters are romantically alienated loners, taciturn and cool. The hitman kills his targets nonchalantly, in shoot-outs filmed with woozy style, not caring who they are or why they've been targeted. The second story stars Takeshi Kaneshiro (one of the cops of Chungking Express) as an eccentric mute who breaks into closed-up shops at night and illegally runs the business, aggressively (and amusingly) coercing customers into buying whatever he's selling. He falls in love with another spastic oddball (Charlie Yeung), but his affection is unrequited.

Even more than in Chungking Express, the two stories of Fallen Angels are strikingly different from each other. The hitman's story is surprisingly violent for Wong. The hitman and his partner are classic Wong characters - cool, introspective loners - but taken to a darker extreme. They are entirely detached from everyone and everything, nocturnal creatures living by their own codes, beautiful but doomed. Wong's style is moodier and more experimental than ever. He often films characters with a fish-eye lens, their faces looming in the foreground against a distant background of neon lights and colors. It's a disorienting but perfect way to portray their alienation through visuals, loners drifting through the seductively dangerous world of Hong Kong at night.

The second story is far more sentimental and funny, even becoming an outright slapstick comedy at points. Much of its charm is due to star Takeshi Kaneshiro, reminiscent of a young Cantonese Johnny Depp. His character, though he cannot speak, is quirky and extroverted. Where many Wong characters put protective barriers between themselves and others, the mute forces himself into others' lives, in amusingly obnoxious ways. He takes his failed romance with Charlie in stride, finding happiness wherever he can. The sweetest moments of Fallen Angels involve the mute's relationship with his father, and their odd but loving friendship.

Fallen Angels is an exuberant mess, digressive and tonally all over the map (it should be noted that this sort of 'messiness' is not unusual for Hong Kong cinema, which often combines comedy, action and drama in ways that might seem incompatible to those used to Hollywood standards, which generally sticks to one or two genres per film). Fallen Angels is more about individual sequences and moments than any overarching plot or theme. These moments are sometimes funny - like Takeshi Kaneshiro harassing unsuspecting passerby into becoming his customers despite their protests. And sometimes they are mesmerizing - like when Michelle Reis leans against a jukebox as a strangely sinister pop song puts her in a trance, and for a few minutes Fallen Angels becomes an abstract music video, lingering on Reis's languid swaying as the machine's fluorescent lights run across her reflective dress. Any narrative is forgotten in the hypnotic interplay of music and color and movement. One downside to Fallen Angels's scattershot approach is that the film is, understandably, uneven - the subplot about the hitman and his other love interest, Blondie (Karen Mok), falls flat. But any dull sequences quickly give way to some new wondrous moment of discovery.

Once again, Wong Kar-wai's love for his home city shines through. Like Chungking Express, Fallen Angels is a cinematic love letter to Hong Kong, though a far stranger and more fantastic one. Fallen Angels takes place almost entirely at night, in a frightening but beautiful vision of Hong Kong that seems more like a science fiction metropolis than a real world city. The mute says that "all the weirdos come out at night" - the characters are these nocturnal weirdos, scrounging a living outside the law and the mainstream, hoping to find simple human connections in the urban purgatory they live in.