Auteur Cinema | Escaping from the Mood for Love

What is the Mood for Love?

What constitutes the mood for love: Is it a state that precedes committing to love, or a particular situation that arises from loving? In Wang Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love, the two main characters, Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen, form a strong bond, but only agree to keep their relationship platonic. The film was well-received by audiences around the world, and premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the prestigious Palme d'Or and won the Technical Grand Prize for its exceptional cinematography. In this article, I will interpret Wang Kar-wai's cinematic language employed in In the Mood for Love, and explore how it creates an overwhelming yet complex emotional experience for the audience.

I saw the film In the Mood for Love a few years ago, but it left a lasting impression on me. Its aesthetic was too enchanting to ignore, and the tragic romance between the two main characters, Chow Mo-wan (Mr. Chow, played by Tony Chiu Wai) and Su Li-zhen (Mrs. Chan, played by Maggie Cheung), was both beautiful and heartbreaking.

Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan were both married before they became neighbors and then friends. When they discovered that their spouses were secretly having an affair with each other, they met to uncover the truth while gradually developing feelings for each other. We are left curious as to how Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan fell in love, just as they were unaware of when or how their spouses began cheating on them. Nevertheless, the mood of Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan is so well-matched that we have no doubt they are the perfect couple. The characters long for love and companionship, but their relationship remains unfulfilled. As we are pulled into their intense emotions for each other, we are also filled with a sense of sorrow.

In an interview with Michel Ciment (the editor of the cinema magazine, Positif) and Hubert Niogret (writer in Positif), Wong Kar-wai argued that it would be uninteresting to simply depict what was right or wrong about the affair. Instead, he aimed to capture the unique attitudes that people had at that particular time. This atmosphere, which Wong Kar-wai considered to be distinct, could only have existed during that specific period, when society held extremely strict and conventional opinions regarding extramarital relationships. He said:

“I’m not trying to tell a story about an affair… The whole thing is about the time, the period and also how people treat this affair. Over the years (Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow) they keep it as a secret.”

I'm impressed with Wang Kar-wai's approach in the film. His idea was presented in a more rhetorical manner than an expressive one, which left me wondering about how he used it. After all secrets are meant to be revealed, not told. Under Wong Kar-wai's lens, the romantic affair of Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan unfolds, exploring the unfulfilled feelings that they share and the heart-felt regret that they experience. Their love is unrecognized by society and even by themselves, yet the fact that they are in love with each other inevitably consumes them. Learning their story is like indulging in the sight of a cloudy sky, watching the wind and rainfall intertwined but never blending together.

This sad pair is betrayed by their original spouses. Although they have every reason to be released from their primary commitment, their moral standards and dignity prevent them from doing so. They live in the same space, but they feel guilty paying attention to each other. It appears that they are exiled from the state of loving—as they can neither love their spouse nor the other. Both Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan are in the mood for love, but they are merely approaching the state of love instead of possessing it.

Being Trapped, Observed, then Dissolved

The use of the frame within frame technique is prominent in the film In the Mood for Love, revealing a major theme of the film: feeling trapped under constant surveillance led by gossip. In the screenshot below, Mrs. Chen is shown watching Mr. Chen playing mah-jong. Although all the characters are participating in the same activity, they are separated by different layers. Mrs. Chen is positioned next to the door and her dress is noticeably different from the others, creating a sense of distance between her and the other characters.

Mrs. Chen appears to be an outsider, voluntarily trapped in a half-open space. While she may not seem to match with her husband, she cannot lean back and can only incline forward to follow her husband's interests. In fact, most time of the film is double-framed, creating a sense that the characters are trapped and under surveillance. Both Mr. Chow and Mr. Chen are afraid of gossip, and all other characters are complicit in it. As a well-known YouTube film critic, Nerdwriter1 remarks:

“The real action of this movie is in postures, glances and touches and by restricting the language, Wong Kar-wai echoes the restriction of action that plagues Mr. Chau and Mrs. Chan in 1960's Hong Kong where they are under constant threat of gossip, a kind of surveillance from their landlords and the community at large.”

Furthermore, Wong Kar-wai also uses "frame within frame" in a more creative manner. In the screenshot below, you may notice how Mrs. Chen is positioned in the center, separating herself from the other characters. She lowers her head, indicating that she is not inclined to converse and avoids making eye contact. Usually, she would engage with at least one of them, given that she is buying food in a communal area. The message is evident: Mrs. Chen resists sharing her ambiguous feelings about the affair with anyone and cannot even expose her inner thoughts in front of the public because she is being observed in this busy community.

“Showing the Changed through Unchanged”

In the following sequence, the first shot is an establishing shot that shows where Mrs. Chow works. In the second shot, Mr. Chow asks if his wife will be off work on time so he can pick her up for dinner. In the third shot, Mrs. Chow excuses herself for overtime, but in the fourth and fifth shots, the other employees at Mrs. Chow's company tell Mr. Chow that his wife has already left. In the sixth shot, it is revealed that Mr. Chow has finally discovered that his wife is lying to him and may be cheating on him.

By slowly panning the camera between different positions while reframing to an identical composition, the scene creates a false impression that Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chow are talking in constant, chronological time. However, the actual time could have passed days or even weeks. Therefore, when we see Mr. Chow finally overwhelmed by the truth, we are more likely to feel the emotional impact as strongly as he did. In real-life situations, we often refuse to believe the shocking truth until there is an "Aha" moment, and then suddenly discover that our emotions have been long suppressed, leaving us feeling trapped and vulnerable.

After this kind of ambiguous sequence, the timeline we initially followed becomes unclear. While we are drawn into the love story between Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chen, we become disoriented by their complicated relationship in space and time. Furthermore, as victims of an affair, their emotions are scattered and confused, much like our perception of the sequence. In a larger sense, the sequence imitates the experience of drifting, as we know what has already happened but can only glean a minimum of clues about the changing situation.

As a sequence of slow motion follows (see below), the characters' body movements seem to gradually dissolve into the scene. The framing of the shots is consistent, but the emotions of the characters have undergone significant changes in the "cut-out time", yet we as viewers are not aware of these changes and are accustomed to the unchanging environment. It's like a person having an affair; you may not see any changes in their appearance, but their heart no longer belongs to you.

In this scene, we initially see Mrs. Chen exit the scene as the camera slowly zooms out. Then, the camera shifts its focus to the droplight until Mr. Chow enters the scene and walks into the hidden food plaza behind the alley. In the following shot, we see Mr. Chow eating dumplings while contemplating something. In the subsequent shot, we discover that Mr. Chow is once again entering the alley while Mrs. Chen is leaving.

The entire scene is filmed in slow motion, and the rhetorical significance behind this approach is quite intriguing. Wong Kar-wai provides little information about the destination of the characters as he intentionally blurs the timeline and the chronological sequence of characters' entrances and exits. By disorienting us about what the characters are planning to do, he compels us to pay closer attention to the environment and the spatial relationship between the characters. They frequently go through the same alley, mostly having the same thing in mind. Regardless of the fact that they meet by coincidence, they avoid talking to each other. It is as if this is their common place for burying secrets, and they are aware that the other person is doing the same. However, they have understood it all through minor details already, so they don’t have to reveal it. As Wang Kar-wai noted in his interview:

“I want to show the change through the unchanged, because the film is trying to repeat all the things. The music is repeating all the time, and the way we see certain space like the office, the clock, the corridors is always the same. “

Speaking of which, the clock in the film is a noteworthy prop that serves as a decorative element on the wall. It lacks a second hand, and Wong Kar-wai often intentionally cut to it without a clear purpose. The clock’s sudden appearance makes it difficult to determine its significance to the plot or characters. While it does not appear to be a part of the mise-en-scene, it is included for the sake of being present. Throughout the film, we see several close-ups of identical clocks, only with the time changing each time the film cuts or reframes to it. Thus, the clock is indeed functional, and time is seen to be flowing. In the second unit, the time appears to be static, only changing when the minute or hour hand moves, allowing the audience to perceive the passing of time without knowing how much time has elapsed specifically. As film critic Mazierska, Ewa, and Laura Rascaroli argued that:

…(Wong Kar-wai) draws attention to the increasing in adequacy and redundancy of time in individual lives and cultures. Although the traditional conception of time is becoming insignificant, the effect of its absence from human experience cannot be ignored. Many are confused, even traumatized by this phenomenon, as their defensive expedient of replacing “meaningful time” with “raw time” testifies.

An Era Disconnected from Time

Living in the modern era, we are often too busy to notice the passing of time, so we may never get used to the feeling of time slipping away. Despite the complexity and inconsistency of our life experiences, we tend to organize our memories cohesively. Attempting to convey the feeling of time's absence can be challenging as it might turn out to be jarring, but Wong Kar-wai's approach has made it "readable" by successfully highlighting the constantly existing yet abstract emotions.

However, how does Wong Kar-wai convey such emotions to the audience without overwhelming them? The answer lies in the film's rhythm. If you pay close attention, you'll notice that the interaction between the background music and camera movement in the film is remarkable. Whenever the music plays, I suggest observing the camera movements closely.

In several typical scenes, when the music is playing, Wong Kar-wai moves the camera slowly from side to side and back and forth, following a particular tempo. As a result, the characters' actions seem meaningless, and they gradually lose their shape and become part of the dreamy mood, like an abstract painting. While a long period of time was skipped preceding this dream-like sequence, the slow motion helps us become aware of the flow of time.

Similarly, in real-life situations, we only realize how much time has passed when we sit down, slow down, and pay attention to our surroundings. It is only in these moments that our impulses and thoughts can be unrestricted, coming and going like the tide in a constant manner. As the title, "In the Mood for Love," suggests, the melancholy that arose from Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chen's tragic romance was not necessarily a source of regret, but rather an unspoken feeling of loss that they both recognized. Their past was something to be acknowledged, but they also knew that they had to live in the present and move forward.

Source

WONG KAR-WAI on ''In the Mood for Love'' (2001) Interview at the CANNES Film Festival

youtube.com/watch?v=dNKRhbFgWOo

In The Mood For Love: Frames Within Frames

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01E5otZCpqw

Trapped in the Present: Time in the Films of "Wong Kar-Wai"

Mazierska, Ewa, and Laura Rascaroli. “Trapped in the Present: Time in the Films of ‘Wong Kar-Wai.’” Film Criticism 25, no. 2 (2000): 2–20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44019075.