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In The Mood For Love
R1 - America - Criterion Collection Review written by and copyright: Pat Pilon (20th February 2005). |
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The Film
 This movie is highly symbolic and quite subtle. That’s probably something most people don’t want to hear but believe me when I say it’s worth watching. As you may know, Wong Kar-Wai likes to suggest a few different things with his movies. This here is a very good example. Remember ‘Random Hearts’? Probably not, but this movie has two people meeting, a man and a woman. Their respective spouses are cheating on them with the other’s spouse. That’s where the similarities between the two movies end, though. This one is clearly done to show director Wong Kar-Wai’s messages. Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen Chan (Maggie Cheung) move in to neighbouring apartments. Their spouses are very infrequently home, so the two meet to act out fantasies. Chow pretends to be Su's husband and vice versa- well, Su pretends to be his wife, not husband. Later, they act out problems with their ‘real’ relationship. Sometimes you can’t figure out if they’re acting or being sincere. Nobody can really say what they want to, all they do is act all the time. Everything right down to the last detail means something, everything from the dialogue, the camera positions, the editing, right down to the cigarette smoke has something to say. The mirrors show not what’s really there, but the way people see each other, or other people. There are a few great shots where the camera moves behind both actors’ backs but all you see are the reflections in the mirrors. The terrific acting changes in subtle ways when these shots happen. Nobody can see us as we are, only as a reflection. Two-shots are used for real effect and jump cuts actually carry meaning. The cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Li has to be seen to be believed. This is Mr. Doyle’s best work, even beating out ‘Hero’ and ‘Chunkging Express’. Although, I have to admit that Mr. Doyle only shot a third (I think) of the movie and left soon after shooting began, so Mr. Li replaced him. The way the shadows create dark eyes, or the subtle way the light makes faces glow is stunning. The music by Michael Galasso is just sublime. The lover theme, borrowed from a Seijun Suzuki movie, comes often, but never gets annoying. It’s filled with longing and passion. The art director, costumes and sets convey the same feelings. Wong Kar-Wai set the film in Hong Kong in the 1960s, so the colours are vibrant and bright. Mr. Wong had everything he wanted, and he put everything in this movie. The movie competed with ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ at the Hong Kong Film Awards, but still managed to snag 5 awards. This is Wong Kar-Wai’s most decorated movie, having won many, many awards from so many places around the world.
Video
1.66:1 anamorphic widescreen. This is a very nice picture. It’s a bit grainy at times and there are a few specks but that’s it. The colours are very rich and luscious and the contrast is great. I remember the colours in the theatres and they were like this. The black level is very strong. The details are very good. There’s no real problem. I didn’t see anything wrong with the picture quality other than what I said. The director’s vision is put on screen perfectly. I saw comparison shots of this and the French edition. The French edition has a bit more detail, but the colours are much richer and stronger in the Criterion DVD. I much prefer the Criterion picture, as the colours scheme, I find is better and the actors don’t look squeezed vertically, like the French DVD.
Audio
The sound is in Cantonese and is presented in either Dolby Digital 5.0 or 2.0 surround. I heard the 5.0 track and was very surprised. Even though the movie is basically all dialogue, there was enough rear use to impress me. Ambience is found throughout the movie, wherever these people might be. It’s great to listen to. The house scenes are very active, with the mahjongg players talking and playing throughout the scene, even if they’re not the centre of attention. All through the various office sounds or poring rain, the dialogue is crystal clear. The wonderful score comes out clearly from everywhere, but never pounds out. It just comes out gently, like it’s supposed to. The separation is great and the positions are very accurate. This is one great audio track. Optional subtitles in English are included.
Extras
DISC ONE: First we have a series of 4 Deleted Scenes, and are arranged in an artsy manner. There’s no real indication of where any of them would go except for ‘Room 2046’ or ‘Days in Singapore’ or some other intertitle. Even though there are only 4 scenes, they add up to 32 minutes and 14 seconds! In all fairness, about 10 of those are in the movie or altered in reshoots. The most interesting thing about the scenes are not the scenes themselves, but now Mr. Wong changed the movie by using bits of those scenes, voiceovers and reshoots to change the movie to his liking. As the movie stands now, none of the scenes would be good. They’re rather against character and seem quite out of place. The four blocks of scenes are: ‘Room 2046’ (7:56), ‘Postcards’ (8:19), talks about the days in Singapore, ‘The ‘70s’ (8:53) shows the two in their lives sometime in the 1970s and ‘A Last Encounter’ (7:46), which is in the very end in Cambodia. Additionally you can hear Wong Kar-Wai’s comments on these scenes if you wish. He doesn’t really give away any of his secrets, but he talks about locations and costumes and stories from the set, which is all very interesting. After a 10-hour working day, Mr. Leung ate a lot of durians, shooting a scene at around 5 am. The scene was cut out. Another thing is that the last scene doesn’t have any commentary and in the 25 minutes of scenes with commentary, Mr. Wong talks for maybe 10. "About the Music" is an interactive essay, you’ve got three things to choose from. ‘Musical Themes’ is an essay that talks in detail about the movie’s music. You read about the themes, influences, pop music and other such things. You can also click on links that take you in the part of the movie they’re talking about and listen to whatever piece of music. It’s great to read about the music, although if you don’t really care about when the singers were born and were popular this can get a bit long. Next up is ‘Michael Galasso’s Statement’. I have no idea how many times I’ve listened to the soundtrack, so it’s actually nice to read what the composer has to say. The last is ‘A Director’s Note’, where he very briefly describes how the music came about. I do mean very briefly - only 2 pages worth. It’s nice but way too short. The more information I can get from this guy, the happier I am. ‘Hua Yang De Niang Hua’ is a short film by Wong Kar-wai, this is only 2½ minutes long, but is nice enough. It was used to help the Hong Kong Film Archive promote film preservation. It’s a montage of old and now-forgotten actresses. It’s nice but I don’t recognize anybody. Not that it’s surprising because these girls made movies before Shaw Brothers became popular. You can also read some press notes about what this little film is and why it was used. DISC TWO: "In the Mood for Love" a documentary about the making of the film is roughly 51 minutes long, and is extremely interesting. First of all, throughout this thing, you get footage that was shot but not used. Now, Mr. Wong’s style is to shoot massive amounts of footage, completely change his mind, throw out said footage and start over again. So in here the characters and situations are completely different than in the movie. The calmness, or rather, as Mr. Wong describes it, the maturity, that now resides in the movie is, to put it simply, absent. Mr. Leung seems the play the same character he would later play in ‘A Chinese Odyssey 2002’. Mr. Leung and Mrs. Cheung and Mr. Wong are interviewed and give out their impressions of their characters. They talk about how the characters and movie evolved with Mr. Wong’s whims. You also get some small sound bites from the supporting characters. Mr. Wong talks about the feelings he wanted to evoke with the movie. There’s no real structure to this thing. It seems to go through everything rather randomly. You get no sense of time in here. The most interesting thing, for me, to see is how the movie evolved. You look at the footage shot early in production and the final films, and both are completely different. Great piece, though, and very nice to watch. Interviews with Wong Kar-wai, There are two interviews in this section. The first is ‘Ciment/Niogret Interview’. This is a lot more about ‘In the Mood for Love’ directly than the next one. He starts by talking a little about his childhood and how it applies to the movie. He talks about the movie and shooting ‘2046’ at the same time. He talks about the plot of ‘In the Mood for Love’ and how it evolved (you can read about that in ‘The Searcher’ extra, but is more detailed in this interview). He also talks about the context of the movie in Hong Kong’s history. He also talks about the actors and the music, and other such things related to the movie. This is quite interesting, but for some reason I like the second better. This interview is 22 minutes and 12 seconds long. The second is ‘Cinema Lesson’ is about 15 minute 47 seconds. Mr. Wong talks about scriptwriting: he usually has 3 short stories in mind and shoots them all, but sometimes one or two are forgotten. Interesting way of making a movie. He also talks about working in Hollywood (he did the BMW film, ‘The Follow’), and talks about his film education. He just watched a lot of movies. Very nice and informative interview. These two interviews, by the way, are in English, and have Mr. Wong wearing his dark glasses, like you always see him. I’m not sure he has eyes, actually: I’ve never seen him without sunglasses. Toronto International Film Festival Press Conference, this is a great piece, every September when I could, I would watch these things on community TV. I remember seeing the ‘Ants’ press conference, and the ‘American Beauty’ one as well. They’re great, and this one is no exception. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung are there to answer questions about the movie. This is in English. It’s is kind of funny at times because the reporters keep asking about what Mr. Wong wanted to do with some scenes, like putting in the newsreel at the end. The actors try their best do answer these types of questions, but who really knows if it’s the truth or not? Wong Kar-Wai’s mind is a strange and vague place, so you never really know what’s going on. Also, the sound is sometimes not too good for these conferences, so sometimes the reporters’ questions aren’t too clear. In any case, they have enough time to talk about just about everything to do with the movie. In various questions, they talk about the pre-production, the production and Cannes. They talk a lot about their characters and their contributions to their characters. Mrs. Cheung talks more than Mr. Leung, but she seems more outgoing than he does, so it’s understandable. This is great, and I could have easily heard these two for another hour. As it stands, this is about 43 ½ minutes, and it’s great. "Hong Kong, 1960s" Archive, this talks about the context of ‘In the Mood for Love’. The historical, political and cultural happenings at the time the movie takes place. You’ve got 8 choices in the index, ‘An Intricate Web’, ‘Important Events’, ‘Shanghai(nese)’, ‘Displacement’, ‘Influences’, ‘Cheongsam’, ‘Wu Xia’, ‘Conclusions’. This is very detailed and offers a lot of potential symbolism. Knowing how casually and loosely Mr. Wong seems to work, and now knowing the evolution of how the movie came to be, I don’t know how likely these things are. I do know that anybody can say the same thing about what I wrote, so I shouldn’t say anything. This essay has really complex analyses of the movie and Shanghai and Hong Kong of the time. Interspersed with this are stills of various actors and movies. You also see an 83-second video of a tailor measuring and cutting a cheongsam. It’s quite interesting. The Promotional Material is where you'll find the marketing material used for the film. There are 4 items in this section to choose from: - "Unused Art Concepts" is very interesting. I don’t know where they found this, but the DVD producers did a nice job. This has preliminary concepts and early poster concepts from Hong Kong, Korea and France. Of the preliminary concepts, there’s one I really like, although it has hot orange and pink colours, which could be annoying. The early Hong Kong posters concepts are nice, and there’s one I really love. On the early poster designs for France, the name of the movie ‘Le secret’, ‘The Secret’. Interesting. - "Posters", where, if you don’t know what to expect, maybe this movie isn’t for you. The Hong Kong one-sheet poster is the best poster for the movie. It’s the one with Tony Leung standing behind Maggie Cheung, kissing her neck (or whatever he’s doing). For some reason I really like the German poster as well. You also get to see the Italian, US, Korean, Russian and other posters for the movie. Interesting to see how the designs change according to the region. One funny thing is that the DVD has the French TV spot, trailer, and early poster design, but doesn’t have the French poster. Go figure. - "TV Spots & Trailers", where you can see 2 Hong Kong TV spots (1:33 each), the US TV spot (0:32) and trailer (1:35), and a French TV spot (0:30) and trailer (1:58). Both Hong Kong spots have scenes not in the movie, the second one having many scenes. What’s strange is that none of these especially want to make me see the movie, with the possible exception of the French trailer, because it has that music I like so much. I’m glad I saw the movie, though. - "Electronic Press Kit", is 18 minutes 17 seconds long. Like it says, it’s the EPK. As such, it’s promotional and not as good as the ‘@ In the Mood for Love’ documentary. It is much better than American EPKs, though. It’s in English, and probably made for international markets. You do see scenes that aren’t in the movie, which, looking through this set, is quite prevalent; but like Mrs. Cheung said in the TIFF press conference, if you added up all the unused footage, it would be longer than the movie itself. Anyway, unlike American EPKs, the people interviewed don’t uselessly praise everybody, they actually try to bring some insight to the characters and movie. Whether they succeed or not is debatable, but it’s very nice to see. You obviously see a lot of movie footage (that is in the movie) and behind the scenes footage. Mr. Wong and his dark glasses really do a good job for an EPK. A Photo Gallery is also included, you’ve got three galleries here, ‘Anticipation’, which shows the two actors individually, ‘Intersection’, which shows them together, and ‘Memories’, which is very small (7 pictures) and shows the ending of the movie. All the pictures are great and are very arty. They show scenes that were cut out of the movie. They also shows things like boom mikes. They all look like publicity stills, but they’re very pretty to look at (and not just because they have Mr. Leung and Mrs. Cheung in them!). "The Searcher: Wong Kar-Wai" this is basically a glorified biography. It’s huge and always interesting. Interspersed through the pages of writing are pictures of various actors, directors places and movie stills. It’s divided into seven parts. ‘Beginning’ is his beginnings in the industry. Where he grew up and how he got to work for TVB. Next, ‘Establishing a Vision’ talks about ‘As Tears Go By’ and ‘Days of Being Wild’, his first two movies. ‘Independence’ talks about ‘Ashes of Time’ in detail. You see the 3 ½ minute trailer here. Given that it’s not in the Mei Ah DVD I own, it’s nice to see it here. The picture quality, by the way, is much better in this trailer than in the DVD. This is great information and leads very nicely into- ‘Cops & Criminals’, which discusses ‘Chungking Express’ and ‘Fallen Angels’. You see the trailer, 2 minutes 46 seconds long, for the latter movie. I think the guy that wrote for the Village Voice is fuzzy in the head. He calls this movie ‘quintessential’ Wong Kar-Wai. It’s nothing like Mr. Wong’s other movies. Next up is ‘From Buenos Aires to Cannes’ where you can read things about ‘Happy Together’. The 90-second trailer is shown. ‘Something Familiar, Something New’ tells you about ‘In the Mood for Love’. Reading about ‘In the Mood for Love’, you learn how the strange first idea, ‘Summer in Beijing’, became ‘In the Mood for Love’. He decided to make a movie about food, told in three vignettes. The third vignette had the same plot as ‘In the Mood for Love’. I suppose that little vignette interested Mr. Wong so much, so that became the movie. The scenes in Angkor Wat were shot two weeks before the movie played at Cannes. The ‘In the Mood for Love’ trailer is also shown, 3 minutes, 17 seconds. ‘Et Alia’ just talks about some other projects Mr. Wong was involved with. This is really interesting to read, and is very informative about Mr. Wong’s career. Here are some of my random musings on his movie’s posters: The original Hong Kong ‘As Tears Go By’ poster is awful. The Hong Kong poster for ‘Days of Being Wild’ is, in my opinion, the best Wong Kar-Wai movie poster, while the British poster for that movie is awful. The French poster is, well, French. The poster for ‘Ashes of Time’ is very good. The original poster for ‘Chungking Express’ somehow reminds of the ‘Six Days’ music video. The ‘Fallen Angels’ poster is okay, but nothing incredible. The poster for ‘Happy Together’ is really nice. The original ‘In the Mood for Love’ poster from Hong Kong isn’t as good as the one-sheet poster with Maggie Cheung in it. "About the Cast" biographies, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Rebecca Pan, Lai Chin, Siu Ping-Lam and Chin Tsi-Ang get biographies. This is really nice. It’s better than the bios on the Hong Kong DVDs. Like the crew stuff, it kind of reads like a press kit release, but it’s still nice to have. The two stars have complete filmographies, which is nice to see on a US DVD. One thing that I didn’t know before reading this is that Chin Tsi-Ang, who plays Amah in the movie, is the grandmother of none other than Sammo Hung! "About the Crew" biographies, cinematographers Christopher Doyle and Mark Li, production designer/editor/costume designer William Chang Suk-Ping, ‘In the Mood for Love’ composer Michael Galasso and composer Umebayashi Shigeru get small biographies. Mr. Umebayashi didn’t compose anything for this movie (although he scored Zhang Yimou‘s second martial arts flick, ‘House of Flying Daggers’ among others), but a piece of score from ‘Yumeji’ served as the love theme in ‘In the Mood for Love’. The biographies are short, as I’ve said, but informative. These are not people that usually get biographies, so it’s nice to see Criterion put in the effort. They do read like press kit stuff, but it’s still nice to have them. The disc also has an Easter Egg, this is a music video, called ‘Hua Yang Nian Hua’, directed by Wong Kar-Wai, sung by Tony Leung and some girl, whom I don’t know because you don’t really see her too well, but who might be Faye Wong. You know, I never get used to hearing Tony Leung sing. He’s an actor, and hearing him sing is just plain strange, especially considering he’s a much better actor than singer. This is, nonetheless, a good song. It has the longing and languorous strings the movie score has. It really has a nice style, as well. I prefer ‘Six Days’, though, but this is still good. About 4 minutes 17 seconds long. Finally the set also comes with a 48-page booklet, featuring "Intersection", a complete short story that influenced the film, It’s a nice story but is imbued with melancholy in every sentence. Older people think of the past, younger people think of the future. Nice story, though. This is one of the many inspirations for the movie. The booklet also features a director's statement and an essay by film critic Li Cheuk-to.
Overall
The first time I saw this movie was in a double-bill with ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ (here). The second time I saw this movie I was sitting in my living room some three years later, watching it to write this review. I will undoubtedly see it many more times, as it’s very layered, and more viewings bring out more to see. The music alone is enough to make anyone see it. It’s better than his previous movies. It’s subtler and more mature. Gone are the voiceovers and step photography (mostly, anyway), and the overt symbolism of the past. This is one hell of a movie and all I can say is: wow.
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