Line #21 Film/InTheMoodForLove


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7	-> ''"It is a restless moment. She has kept her head lowered, to give him a chance to come closer. But he could not, for lack of courage. She turns and walks away."''
8	-->-- '''The opening intertitle'''
9
10	''In the Mood for Love'' (original title: 花樣年華) is a movie by UsefulNotes/HongKong art-house director Creator/WongKarWai, who had previously made a name for himself with the critically acclaimed ''Film/ChungkingExpress'' in 1994. Released in 2000, it is set in early 1960s Hong Kong within a Shanghainese community and tells the bittersweet story of Mr Chow (Creator/TonyLeungChiuWai) and Mrs Chan (Creator/MaggieCheung) who are neighbors, and whose respective spouses have an affair with each other. While they find themselves increasingly attracted to each other, they refuse to give in to their feelings out of a sense of propriety.
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12	It is the second part of an informal trilogy of films. The first, ''Film/DaysOfBeingWild'' (1991), was (partly) about Maggie Cheung's character from this one. Tony Leung also appeared in an uncredited cameo, but it's unclear if he was playing the same character. The third film, ''Film/TwoThousandFortySix'' (2004), is about Leung's ''In the Mood for Love'' character, with Cheung briefly appearing in flashback. Though thematically similar (as is much of Wong Kar Wai's work, which [[AuthorAppeal very often]] deals with the difficulty of finding love), the films don't have much in common story-wise. ''2046'' might spoil ''In the Mood for Love'' a little bit, but otherwise they're separate experiences.
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14	-------
15	!!Contains examples of:
16
17	* AuthorAppeal: Shanghainese culture, and feelings of alienation. Both big parts of Wong's own life. It may be hard for non-Chinese speakers to pick up the fact that there are actually two varieties of Chinese spoken in this film -- Cantonese and Shanghainese. For a Chinese audience, this reveals that the setting isn't just any ordinary place in Hong Kong but specifically an exiled Shanghainese enclave.
18	* BaitAndSwitch: One scene features Chan asking her TheFaceless husband about whether or not he's having an affair. He admits it and she slaps him... except she just mimes slapping him. The scene then cuts to a different camera angle to show that the man is actually Chow and she's practicing how to confront him.
19	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Chow and Chan are able to experience true love with each other, but they never consummate their feelings and they end the story apart, with Chow admitting his secrets while alone.]]
20	** [[spoiler: It also seems Chan and her husband have broken up, as her new neighbor refers to the apartment's inhabitants as just, "A woman and her son." Chan's marriage was never very ''real'' in the film--never shown on screen. Yet it is, ostensibly, the reason she won't be with Chow, so for it to be simply discarded offscreen makes the whole plot more "all for naught".]]
21	* BlatantLies: Chan hears that Chow is sick and wants sesame syrup, so she makes some and brings it to him, then lies and says she wasn't specifically doing it for him.
22	-->'''Chow:''' I never thanked you for the sesame syrup.\
23	'''Chan:''' There's no need, I was making it anyway.\
24	'''Chow:''' Amazing! I was craving some sesame syrup that day.\
25	'''Chan:''' Really? What a coincidence!
26	* ComicRolePlay: PlayedForDrama. Chan and Chow meet up to act out fictitious scenarios of being their spouses having an affair, imagining and reimagining how that affair began. It's awkward, funny, tense, and flirtatious.
27	* CourtlyLove: They believe that not consummating their affair makes it okay, gives them moral legitimacy, and sets them apart from other adulterers. [[spoiler:Chow ultimately comes to the decision that this kind of desire is too hard and painful and he can't keep doing this indefinitely''.
28	* DidNotGetTheGirl: [[spoiler:Chow and Chan never consummate their feelings and fail to reunite.]]
29	* DidTheyOrDidntThey: They never consummated their relationship. Probably. There's one night when Chan says, "I don't want to go home tonight," and what follows is not shown. She has a young son in one of the timeskips. He's her husband's. Probably. Although he ''is'' the right age to have been Chow's.
30	* DropInLandlord: Chan and Chow aren't renting ''apartments'', they're renting ''rooms''. Chow's room was the Koos' son's bedroom until he moved out. Their landlords are also their housemates. They're friendly and chatty, exuding grandparent energy, always extending invitations to their tenants to eat dinner or play mahjong with them. On one hand it's nice for the lonely leads to have someone caring for them like this. But on the other hand there's no privacy and it's claustrophobic. Chan and Chow are in their 30s; the landlords are probably in their 60s. Their invitations are nice, but it doesn't really do much to stave off the leads' loneliness and hunger for a friend.
31	-->'''[[https://i-d.vice.com/en/article/5dzeaq/wong-kar-wai-in-the-mood-for-love-20th-anniversary Christopher Doyle]] (WordOfSaintPaul):''' The film is of, and celebrates, our [Hong Kong] world. In our world, there is no such thing as the Western concept of "privacy," except, as I think the film conceded, in the privacy of your own head. All you are and how you live is relevant to all around you: to society, to those you live with.
32	* EatingLunchAlone: An adult variant, the loneliness of the leads is emphasized by their eating meals alone.
33	* TheFaceless: Neither character's spouse is ever shown; we only hear their voices or see the back of their heads. Ultimately Chow decides to leave his wife, but Chan decides to stay with her husband. The almost complete lack of information we have about either spouse or marriage means that this decision has minimal context for the audience.
34	* {{Foil}}: Everyone else in the story has no sexual boundaries. Their spouses are having an affair. Chan's boss is having an affair. Chow's co-worker frequents prostitutes. Amid this sea, the two of them decide they're better than that and staunchly do not have sex with each other.
35	-->'''Chan:''' We won't be like them.
36	%% * GoodAdulteryBadAdultery: Averted. The protagonists are hurt and angry to learn that their respective spouses are having an affair with each other. ''Because'' they find that behavior so distasteful in others, they tacitly agree not to do likewise.
37	* HidingFromEmbarrassment: Mr Chow and Mrs Chan spend a whole night chastely held up in a bedroom together because leaving would mean walking past where their landlords are playing TabletopGame/{{mahjong}} all night long. If their landlords saw one leaving the other's room like that, they'd think they were having an affair. And they are [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial definitely not having an affair]].
38	-->'''Chow:''' They'll play till morning?\
39	'''Chan:''' Mrs. Suen says only eight rounds.\
40	'''Chow:''' You believe that?
41	* HopeSpot: The various chances [[spoiler:Chan and Chow have of reuniting are missed, and they don't meet again.]]
42	* LandmarkOfLore: The epilogue of the film takes place in Angkor Wat, a place where Mr. Chow feels he can safely unburden himself of his secret.
43	%% * LastNameBasis: Supposedly Mrs Chan's name is actually Su Li-zhen, and Mr Chow's full name is Chow Mo-wan, yet these names appear nowhere in the film itself.
44	%% * LiterallyLovingThyNeighbor:
45	%% ** Their respective spouses fall into this trope by having an affair with each other.
46	%% ** Chow and Chan zigzag the trope with their growing feelings but adherence to the letter--if not the spirit--of propriety.
47	* MostWritersAreWriters: Chow and Chan are both creative people. Part of their relationship is collaborating on a martial arts serial. What kind of person thinks that creative collaboration is terribly romantic? Writers, that's who.
48	* NostalgiaAintLikeItUsedToBe: Played with. It came out in 2000. The director set the film in the 1960s Hong Kong of his childhood. The film depicts its protagonists pining after 1940s Shanghai. They're probably in their early 30s here, and so 1940s Shanghai would've been ''their'' childhood.
49	* PinkIsErotic: Chan and Chow rent a room where they go engage in chaste creative collaboration on a martial arts serial and not have an affair. But they didn't rent office space intended for creative professionals -- they rented what looks like a love nest set up for a tryst. It's a red room with gauzy curtains and a bed, and it ''looks'' sexual. The set design says plainly that which the leads refuse to say.
50	* RuleOfSymbolism: The room number of their rented love nest is 2046. UsefulNotes/HongKong was a British colony for a long time. When it was handed over in 1997, it was given status as a "special administrative region" with 50 years of self-rule. This "one country, two systems" setup will expire in 2047 and Hong Kong will be fully absorbed into the mainland China. Thus, 2046 is imagined to be the final year of Hong Kong as we currently know it.
51	%% * SceneryPorn: Angkor Wat. (That's assuming every movie photographed by Christopher Doyle doesn't ''automatically'' qualify.)
52	* SharpDressedMan: Both leads wear unfailingly formal attire. Chow is always wearing a suit, his hair always gelled. Chan wears an endless parade of beautiful qipaos, hair always in a perfectly coiffed updo. While other characters wear suits and qipaos too, the leads are extra diligent about it. They ''never'' dress otherwise, even at home. Their adherence to strict, restrictive standards of dress mirrors their adherence to strict, restrictive standards of sexual ethics.
53	-->'''Landlord:''' She dresses up like that to go out for noodles?
54	* SlowMotion: Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung are repeatedly filmed in slow motion while walking, climbing stairs, buying noodles, etc...
55	* TitledAfterTheSong:
56	** The original title, "花樣的年華" (''Hua Yang De Nian Hua''), is a song by Zhou Xuan.
57	** The international title is from the song "I'm in the Mood for Love".
58	* TwiceShy: Both Chow and Chan seem to be aware of each other's romantic feelings, but neither one makes a strong gesture toward the other, [[spoiler:and they end up not getting together.]]
59	* UnlimitedWardrobe: Chan wears a different UsefulNotes/{{qipao}} in every scene, and sometimes even within what seems to be one scene, hinting the two of them are playing out various scenarios more than once.
60	* UnresolvedSexualTension: The leads hang out, eat noodles, role play scenes from their spouses' affair as they imagine it, and collaborate on a martial arts serial. They have UST aplenty but they keep their hands to themselves. Worried their landlords will think they're having an affair, they rent a love nest where they go to have their not-affair.

Context Film / InTheMoodForLove