The last
time I rewatched In the Mood for Love,
I was struck for the umpteenth time by how much I love the connection between
Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan. Today is all
about this fantastic pair (premise spoilers for the film.)
Although
Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan have a few encounters early in the film that straddle
the line between polite neighborly acknowledgment and more overt friendship –
Mr. Chow is pleased to discover their shared interest in martial arts serials –
they keep one another firmly in the sphere of neighbors. Renting rooms from couples in side-by-side
apartments, everyone lives on top of one another and everyone is in everybody’s
business. In such close quarters, it’s
natural that the two should cross paths, but it’s even more natural that they
keep everything at arms length. At
first, this isn’t so much a conscious distancing as it is simply what people
do. They’re in one another’s orbits, but
those orbits are distinct.
It isn’t
until both begin to suspect that their spouses are having an affair with one
another that anything real starts happening between them, but this too begins
with such politeness and restraint. They
dance around the issue, Mr. Chow asking where she got her handbag and Mrs. Chan
asking where he got his tie, both speaking under the guise of wanting to buy
one for their spouses but both knowing their spouse already has one just like
it. When the revelations they already
know – “It was a gift from my husband,” “My wife buys all my ties” – are spoken
aloud, the pauses are pregnant, almost like they’re swallowing sound
itself. “…I thought I was the only one
who knew,” Mrs. Chan speaks out of the vacuum.
From
here, they begin two separate relationships.
The first is the one they play-act, speculating as to how the affair
with his wife and her husband came about.
Each takes on the part of the other’s spouse, coaching one another on
how to get in character, and they continually break their hearts all over again
in their mutual need to understand how it happened. The second, though, is a “simple” friendship
(more on those quotations in a second,) writing together, sharing meals, and
generally finding comfort and companionship with one another.
But in
this conservative time and place, in this fish bowl where they live, no
friendship between a man and a woman, both of whom are married, can be
simple. This is a world in which both
have to blithely pretend that their spouses are away on business or visiting
sick relatives, not run off together, and despite their own protestations that
they don’t care what people say, the worry creeps in. They both wind up calling in sick to work
when Mrs. Chan gets stuck in Mr. Chow’s room after the other family living in
his apartment comes home unexpectedly.
Even though Mrs. Chan is a neighbor and visits often, they panic at the
thought of being found alone together.
Somewhere
in this swirl of role-playing an affair, forging a friendship, and fretting
about whispers of impropriety, the three threads start to get tangled up in one
another, and everything gets less clear.
The lines blur, and Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan begin to lose track of it all
– what’s acting, what’s friendship, what’s love, what’s gossip, what’s real –
when they realize how far it’s gotten away from them.
Such a
fascinating exploration, played with such care and gentleness. It gets me every time.
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