Further Thoughts on In the Mood for Love

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.