In the Mood for Love
dir. Wong Kar-Wai
USA Films

What's more exciting — the possibility of romance or its actualization? In our times of instant gratification, most people would pick the latter. With In the Mood for Love, director Wong Kar-Wai quite convincingly suggests the former may be far more seductive and swoon-worthy. Using stylish camerawork and a disjointed narrative, Wong explores the meaning of fidelity, love and marriage through the relationship of two neighbors who discover their spouses are having an affair with each other.

Set in 1960s Hong Kong, In the Mood for Love captures a time now forgotten, when love affairs were still shocking and sharing an umbrella with a man that isn't one's husband was considered taboo. Into this world fall Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung as the left-behind spouses who take refuge in one another's loneliness. The pair — one of the most beautiful on-screen couplings in recent years — begin spending time together to figure out how, exactly, their never-seen spouses gravitated toward each other.

At the beginning, Cheung and Leung stare sorrowfully at each other, aching from the rifts in their respective marriages. But as time passes, the reason behind those sorrowful stares changes as they fall in love with each other, knowing that nothing serious can ever come of how they now feel. And nothing does — but saying so doesn't necessarily give away the ending of the movie. In the Mood for Love isn't a movie with a beginning and an end; it's stasis, emotionally wracking and caught on film.

Time passes slowly in this blue- and purple-hued world that Wong has created, and he drenches every moment with melancholy and importance. In fact, the only time the pair is shown happy is during smoke-filled montages, where Cheung and Leung's smiling faces appear reflected in mirrors.

Wong is aware of the significance of his imagery; he's asking whether the idea that love is happiness is just smoke and mirrors. Cheung and Leung are deeply in love but can't ever be happy — their joy is short-lived, a façade in front of their inner despondency.

And yet, somehow, Wong uses this inner despondency and melancholy to make the film sexier and more romantic than if he had just allowed his leads to consummate their affair onscreen. Wong understands the importance of tragedy in good romance; "Romeo and Juliet" is romantic because its leads make the ultimate sacrifice for their love, not because two teenagers fall in love and plot to run away together.

Cheung and Leung decide to do what their society considers the right thing, but that isn't the pair's ultimate sacrifice. Their ultimate sacrifice is that both are doomed to remember the love that could have been, to feel the thrill of romance without ever fully experiencing it with each other. Rarely has such heartbreak been such a pleasure to watch.

— Stephanie Kuenn (smkuenn at gmail dot com)