In the Mood for Love

Wong Kar-Wai’s dazzling Chungking Express (1994) featured in Pacific Cinémathèque’s “Best of the 1990s” program a decade ago; the Hong Kong hipster may now be a mature master, but he’s still an exhilarating visual stylist, and memory, regret and the relentless passage of time remain his métier. In the Mood for Love is a moody, moving memory piece starring two of Asia’s most glamorous performers, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung (the latter winning Best Actor honours at Cannes). They play neighbours in 1962 Hong Kong who suspect that their spouses are having an affair. As the two begin spending more time with each, intense feelings, largely unspoken and unacted upon, develop between them. Wong’s ravishing, erotically-charged drama of repression is orchestrated through details of gesture, glance, setting, and clothing (check out Cheung’s amazing dresses!), and filtered through the dreamy mind’s-eye of memory. “Every charged frame of the film pulses with the central contradiction between repression and emotional abandon; the formalism and sensuality are inextricable. Career-best performances from both leads” (Tony Rayns, Time Out). “Probably the most breathtakingly gorgeous film of the year, dizzy with a nose-against-the-glass romantic spirit that has been missing from the cinema forever” (Elvis Mitchell, New York Times).