“You notice things if you pay attention.”
I was pleasantly surprised to be directed to The Rej, one of the smaller, more intimate rooms at the Plaza Theatre for the 25th anniversary restoration of In the Mood for Love. With only about twenty people in the room, it just felt right. This isn’t a film meant to be consumed at scale. We’re meant to overhear whispers that pass through walls, to catch glimpses through slivers in doorways.
I sat in the back row and searched for an opening between the heads in front of me. There are portals everywhere in this film. Of course, the literal ones: windows, mirrors, curtain cracks, alleyways. But also metaphorical apertures, especially in the small, unspoken rituals that epitomize Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan’s relationship. It’s impossible to miss these moments; the world slows down and the music swells. Furtive glances near the noodle shop. Missed footsteps. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath along with them. Like Wong Kar-wai’s other work, this film hinges on something that escapes language. Its essence isn’t memory, but the potential of memory. The almosts.
It’s 1962, and Hong Kong here is not yet the neon metropolis it would become. It’s a city lit from within, by lampshades, amber bulbs, hallway fluorescents that flicker with emotional residue. The lighting doesn’t spotlight the characters so much as gleam around them, as if their longing emits heat.
That incandescence is most literal in Maggie Cheung’s expressions and her cheongsams, which shift with each scene like emotional timestamps. She moves through them with fluid precision, as if built from memory and mirage. “She dresses up like that to go out for noodles?" Her neighbors murmur in her wake.
Tony Leung, too, is impeccably composed. Viewers oscillate between his tailored suits and his studied stillness like a plume of smoke. He’s aware of the whispers. “There's nothing between us,
but l don't want gossip.” But we wouldn’t fault Mrs. Chan’s if there was. Has anyone ever looked this good with a cigarette in his hand?
Their chemistry is painfully attuned. They rehearse catching their partners in infidelity, share cab rides, lean ever so slightly toward one another without touching. You don’t watch them fall in love. You see love take shape in the distance between them as the rain covers the city streets.
Their world tightens with each passing day: Hallways narrow. Stairwells steepen. Rooms echo with the offscreen noise of neighbors drunkenly playing mahjong. But silence doesn’t have anywhere to go either. It breeds ambient suffocation rather than intimacy. Like the moody wallpaper of the hotel room where they escape, their feelings burn like incense—slowly, inward.
“Feelings can creep up just like that. I thought I was in control,” Mr. Chow admits.
But of course, desire doesn’t move cleanly. It spills and stains like ink from a pen you forgot in your pocket. And though the two protagonists once vowed “We won’t be like them,” we know even then that they already are.
We never see the spouses whose betrayals bind the story. But we feel their absence in the objects they leave behind - souvenirs from abroad, rice cookers, ties, elegant handbags. There’s too much stuff filling up the cramped apartments, and yet they feel hollow - almost haunted by presence withheld. Inhaling the vapor of rumor to the air, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan become ghosts in their own homes. Shadows orbiting through routine, colliding softly every once in a while.
The only thing that carries them forward is music. Nat King Cole’s voice drifts out from behind red curtains. In his crisp, American accented Spanish, we hear about longing and loss.
Quizás, Quizás, Quizás. The music speaks for them. What couldn’t be said becomes a pattern, then a memory. Slowly, even the ache softens, leaving only its shape behind.
“He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.”
It’s hard to describe In the Mood for Love to people. The film doesn’t operate as plot so much as atmosphere. And it’s certainly not a love story. But a memory of what love almost was.
Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.