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.

Relationship Spotlight: Mrs. Chan & Mr. Chow (In the Mood for Love)

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.

Favorite Characters: Mr. Chow (In the Mood for Love)

First up, here’s the A Little TLC(w) addendum for Inthe Mood for Love:  “Recommend?  In General and Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”  Nothing but boundless love for that film.    Second, even though this is technically the same Chow Mo-wan character from 2046, I’m going to use “Mr. Chow” because the characterization is so different between the two films that I’m sure I’ll do a separate write-up the next time I rewatch 2046.  (Mr. Chow-related spoilers.)

It’s interesting, because I used to think “still and soulful” was just kind of Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s thing.  In most of the first films I saw him in, his character fit that description.  I used both those words not too long ago in talking about the Blind Swordsman in Ashesof Time, and it could similarly apply to his roles in Hero, Red Cliff, Chungking Express, and other movies I’ve seen him in over the years.  Now that I’m exploring his filmography more deliberately, I can see that that’s only one of the tools in his arsenal, and he’s definitely played his share of characters that are nothing like Mr. Chow.  But even though I’ve started to see more of his range, this is still the sort of role I most closely associate with him, and they always resonate so strongly for me.

On paper, there’s not much to Mr. Chow at first.  He’s pretty much the definition of “mild-mannered,” a dutiful employee and loving if overworked husband, a man who doesn’t quite initially realize he’s leading a life of quiet desperation.  It’s Mrs. Chan who points out to him that all his interests and hobbies are things he “used to” do or enjoy; somewhere along the way, after his marriage, the things he liked just sort of drifted away from him and he was too caught up by the current to notice.  He’s fastidiously polite, he plays the pragmatist to his irresponsible friend, and he makes quiet excuses when people make comments that run the risk of alluding to his wife’s fidelity.

It’s not until after his wife runs off with Mrs. Chan’s husband that he starts to make more than idle considerations about what he wants.  He’s the one who invites Mrs. Chan out to delicately broach his suspicions about their spouses’ affair, which is maybe his first foray into this:  acknowledging his desire to know, and not to be alone in that knowledge.  Here, he and Mrs. Chan are both tentative and, again, so, so polite.  It takes ages for either of them to come to the point, but once they do, I think it opens something up for Mr. Chow.  While Mrs. Chan has been gently doing her own thing in the absence of her husband – finding quiet ways to occupy her time and the space society tells her he’s supposed to be filling – Mr. Chow hasn’t been doing much of anything, and with that conversation, things begin to change. 

Whether it’s deeply personal (roleplaying with Mrs. Chan as they try to figure out how the affair began,) of less consequence (deciding to finally try his hand at writing a martial arts serial,) or implied to be improper (befriending Mrs. Chan even though they’re both still married and people will talk, don’t you know?), Mr. Chow dips his toes further and further into the idea of living for himself.  Though he starts out gingerly, it doesn’t take him long to get swept up in it, to the point that he rents a separate room in a different building for he and Mrs. Chan to write in when they both start to worry about what the neighbors will think of their friendship.  When it gets to these extremes, Mrs. Chan is ready to cut their losses and stop writing together, (not because she’s indifferent, not at all – it’s just how she reacts to things,) but Mr. Chow digs in.  After goodness knows how long, he’s found something that makes him happy, and he’s not about to let it go so easily.

He’s kind of a deceptively-intriguing character, and Leung brings him to life gorgeously.  What a great portrayal of a man slowly dawning on the realization that he’s been sleeping through his life, discovering what is to be awake, growing protective of the new sensations it’s brought him, and ultimately following it to the end of a path that he pretty much knows will lead to heartbreak, possibly wondering if he wouldn’t have been better off staying asleep and yet not willing to close his eyes again.  Just beautiful work, extremely subtle but wonderfully effective.  Leung, along with Maggie Cheung, delivers a master class in acting in this movie, and these performances are a major part of the reason why I’ve seen it probably half a dozen times but can still rewatch it with absolutely rapt attention.

In the Mood for Love (2000, PG)

 

I love Wong Kar-wai’s films, and this is the one that did me in.  It wasn’t my first.  I’d actually already seen 2046 – since, unbeknownst to me at the time, it’s a sequel of sorts to this movie, I found it gorgeous and incomprehensible – which put its sumptuous predecessor on my radar.  It was quite some time before I got my hands on it, but when I did, I was absolutely bowled over.

 

In the Mood for Love, beautifully set in Hong Kong in the early 60s, is the quiet story of a profound connection between a man and a woman.  Neighbors Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen go from acquaintances to confidantes when they realize that their spouses are having an affair with one another.  With the adulterers abroad together, Mo-wan and Li-zhen forge a gentle bond as they both muddle through the pain of being left behind.  In this time and place, neither can talk openly about what’s happened to them; it’s one of those things that Just Aren’t Spoken Of, and so they put on serene faces while they silently break in private.  Only with each other can they be sincere. 

 

It begins as a mutual means of coping.  They piece together details of the affair and contemplate its origins, they try to imagine what their spouses are like together, and they role-play confrontation scenarios.  As time goes by, however, their connection goes beyond shared pain as they discover shared interests, and suddenly, they start to feel secretive about their relationship.  Close friendships between married men and women in the absence of their spouses Just Aren’t Done either, and they can’t bear the thought of anyone thinking they’re the ones being unfaithful.

 

There is where In the Mood for Love distinguishes itself from so many romances.  Mo-wan and Li-zhen are undeniably entwined – theirs is a deep, emotional connection, a kinship of the soul, and there’s palpable electricity between them, but it’s all crackling just beneath the surface.  This isn’t a film about groping and clinging and sweating.  Rather, it’s about slight, soft touches charged with meaning and unarticulated wants.  It’s about restraint, not giving over.  Mo-wan and Li-zhen have been so devastated by their spouses’ betrayal that, despite their growing feelings for one another, they hold back the floodgates.  Their guiding mantra is “We won’t be like them,” and this emotionally-charged self-denial makes it the most understatedly sensual movie I’ve ever seen.

 

A big part of that is the flawless acting by Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Maggie Cheung.  Of their many collaborations I’ve seen, this is far and away the best, and that’s saying something.  They portray these reserved, sensitive individuals with such grace, and the tender connection between them is developed with exquisite care.  Both can speak volumes with their expressions and wonderfully handle the deep-running still waters of their characters.  Additionally, Wong Kar-wai’s direction drips with romance, and the evocative score, sublime costumes (oh my gosh, the costumes,) and thoughtful camera work are all impeccable.  Even among Wong’s other fine films, it’s in a league of its own; I am in love with this movie.

 

Warnings

 

Thematic elements, a little drinking, some language, and references to infidelity.