Trivia / In the Mood for Love

• Completely Different Title: The original title 花樣年華 (Huayang Nianhua) translates to "Our Glorious Years Have Passed Like Flowers", an 1940s Shanghainese song by Zhou Xuan. It was given the international name based on the Bryan Ferry song "I'm in the Mood for Love" because they thought audiences would not get the reference. Wong Kar-wai became enamored with the song during post-production.
• Deleted Scene: In most films, a deleted scene is something that came close to making it in. With director Wong Kar-wai, a deleted scene is more like What Could Have Been. He doesn't do scripts, so all ideas — even ones that another director would've weeded out much earlier on — are being played with on set. There are numerous deleted scenes, some of which completely change the story.
  • Chan and Chow have a goofy dance back when the film was intended to be more lighthearted.
  • An alternate ending featuring Chow meeting Chan again at Angkor Wat and she seems to have moved on from him but he has not.
  • Chow falls ill and Chan goes to his room to give him medicine and look after him.
  • Chan and Chow extend their roleplay to incorporate sex but the two can not go through with it out of guilt.
  • Chan and Chow actually do end up having sex after she tells him she doesn't want to go home that night.
• Filming Location Cameo: It's set in 60s Hong Kong, and the city had changed a lot by the 90s when it was filmed. So parts were filmed in Bangkok, Thailand, which looked more how Wong remembered Hong Kong of that period. Then the final scene is in Angkor Wat, which is nearby Bangkok (but not Hong Kong).
• Referenced by...: In Red, White & Royal Blue, In the Mood for Love is Prince Henry's favourite film and he considers it to be the "swoon-iest" movie of all time.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: The Shanghainese culture employed in the film often flies by the heads of international audiences. For a Chinese audience, this reveals that the setting isn't just any ordinary place in Hong Kong but specifically an exiled Shanghainese enclave. Many Shanghainese people fled Mainland China for British-ruled Hong Kong after the communist revolution. This type of setting furthers the feelings of isolation the main characters experience. They are not only lonely because their spouses are being unfaithful to them but they are also living their lives away from their origins. This is especially painful from a Chinese perspective as it separates one from their "ancestral home". This setting was specifically chosen to mirror the director's own alienated childhood growing up in Hong Kong as a Shanghainese immigrant. In the Mood for Love is set in 1960s Hong Kong but carries on an essence of Shanghainese culture which ended in the 1940s. On the meta-level, the film can be seen as tribute to Shanghai's past glory days which have now long faded; lost to the revolution.
  • The most explicit clue to the Shanghai-ness of the film is a landlady who speaks a large amount of Shanghainese. Chinese languages not from the same family are unintelligible so the usual Hong Konger would not have any idea what she is saying, but all the characters in this film understand her perfectly because they are all actually Shanghainese. The things she says also doubles as a Bilingual Bonus.
  • The Chinese title, Huayang Nianhua, is a metaphor — translated "the age of blossoms" or "the flowery years" — but more accurately meaning "those wonderful varied years", is suggestive of period nostalgia. It is the title of a Chinese pop song from the 1940s by the Shanghainese singer-actress Zhou Xuan. The film associates itself with that of Shanghai's iridescent, kaleidoscopic age of bygone elegance and diversity.
  • The martial arts serials that Chow writes with input from Su recall the methods of the "old school" writers of martial arts fiction in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai.
  • Many of the female characters wear qipao because it is a dress which originated from Shanghai. The qipao was brought to Hong Kong by fleeing Shanghainese immigrants. Su dresses up in a similar fashion to Shanghainese songstresses of the 1940s.
  • In the Mood for Love was inspired in many ways by the old Shanghainese film, Spring in a Small Town. It came out just a year before the Communist revolution and due to its lack of "political grounding" was rejected by the communists.