Simply
put, In the Mood for Love is a
stunner. It’s so masterful, so
beautifully made, so delicately acted… I could go on, and I have. My undying love for Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan is
no secret, but today, what I really want to look at is how the direction deals
with the flipside of the equation: Mr. Chan
and Mrs. Chow. Note:
whichever pair I’m talking about, I’ll use the husband’s name first to
make the distinction clearer – ie, if “Chow” comes first, I’m talking about the
two protagonists, and if “Chan” comes first, I’m talking about the two spouses
(premise spoilers.)
It’s so
striking to me that we never see Mr.
Chan or Mrs. Chow directly. I think we
maybe see Mr. Chan from behind once or twice, and there are a few glancing
shots of Mrs. Chow, never enough to get a clear look at her – just a shape, an
outline, a hand with a ring. Even though
these two characters and their affair together impacts the lives of the two
protagonists in such a profound way, we don’t see them. They exist offscreen, speaking from inside
apartments when all we can see is the hallway.
Whenever they’re actually, properly taking part in a scene, brief as it
is, the camera looks over their shoulder, and they themselves are out of frame.
Their
affair is conducted, presumably, in the usual way, but we don’t see that. When it comes to the actual affair, we don’t
see them at all. Any of the charged,
understated phrases passing between them are said in voiceover over shots of a
clock, the front desk where Mrs. Chow works, a phone – anything but the two of
them. Nor do we see them in any of the
fallout with their spouses. Both Mr.
Chan and Mrs. Chow vanish so offhandedly that they’ve been gone a long time
before their spouses broach the subject with one another.
And even
before they run off together, their marriages to Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan are
marked more by their absence than anything else. Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan both handle moving
into their rented rooms by themselves, and it seems like they’re forever
explaining why their wife/husband isn’t there.
Mr. Chan’s work often takes him abroad.
Mrs. Chow’s work schedule often runs opposite to her husband’s, so they
rarely see each other. So, even before
they run out on their respective marriages, they’re still not really “there.”
This is
such an interesting device to me. It’s a
stylistic choice, certainly, and it makes the films stand out from others about
people who’ve been cheated on. I feel
like it’s also a means of protecting Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan in their
burdgeoning friendship/connection with each other. No matter how appealing the characters in
question otherwise are, and no matter how unappealing
their spouses, I virtually never root for infidelity in a movie, so I’m
certainly not predisposed to want anything to happen between Mr. Chow and Mrs.
Chan, at least as long as things are left unresolved with their spouses. The fact that Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chow have
already left (and that they’ve both been unfaithful themselves) helps smooth
the way for the other two to grow close, but it also helps that Mr. Chan and
Mrs. Chow have never quite felt “real” within the context of the film. They’re like phantoms, and even though we
know they were there, we have no sense of who they are; in fact, the closest we
ever get to knowing them comes through the play-acting Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan
do, taking on the roles of one another’s spouses as they try to understand how
the affair began. Because these two are
kept so much on the periphery of the story, when we see how Mr. Chow and Mrs.
Chan get so close to one another but refrain from touching, we’re freer to view
that as a sad adherence to proscribed social rules rather than the correct tack
to take in the situation.
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