In the Mood for Love (花樣年華, lit. "Years Like Flowers") is a 2000 Hong Kong movie written and directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu Wai.

Plot outline

Hong Kong 1962, Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), a journalist, rents a room from Mr. Koo. He will live there with his wife, a hotel receptionist. It is sheer coincidence that he moves in the same day that Su Lizhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) moves in next door, at Mrs Suen's place. Lizhen works as a secretary to Mr. Ho (Lai Chin), the boss of a shipping company. It is also a coincidence that both of them are moving in without help from their spouses. Chow's wife is working her shift at the hotel at the time of the move. Lizhen's husband, Mr Chan, is away on a business trip; he works for a Japanese company, and is often abroad. Despite having convivial and neighbourly landlords, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan often find themselves alone and lonely in their respective rooms.

Neither of them ever finds out how it began, but Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan discover that their respective spouses are having an affair together. The discovery shocks both of them. Chow, feeling hurt and wishing to understand how the affair happened, begins finding excuses to spend time with Mrs. Chan. They begin rehearsing what they will say to their spouses when they confront them with what they know. Then Mr. Chow invites Mrs. Chan to help him with a martial arts series that he is writing for the newspaper. Their meetings are discreet, but people begin to notice. There seems no possibility that they, too, will drift into an affair. But Mrs. Chan's emotional reticence begins to haunt Mr. Chow and he finds his feelings changing. It is almost like being in love.

Novel artistic devices

Two novel artistic devices are used in this movie. One is the use of seemingly repetitive scenes and the other is that certain sequences which look like one scene are actually a collage of numerous encounters of the two main characters in the movie. These techniques gave the audience the impression that these two characters were doing the same thing over and over again everyday over a very long period of time. However, paying close attention to the dresses (qipao) that Maggie Cheung wears reveals that she wore a different dress in every single shot in those sequences. Obviously they are not the same shot edited over and over again but actually artistic shots with different costume and make up for each shot.

Soundtrack

• Shigeru Umebayashi : Yumeji's Theme (originally from the soundtrack of Seijun Suzuki's Yumeji )
• Michael Galasso : Angkor Wat Theme, ITMFL, Casanova/Flute
• Bryan Ferry: I'm in the Mood for Love
• Nat King Cole: Aquellos Ojos Verdes, Te Quiero Dijiste, Quizas Quizas Quizas

Cast and roles include

• Tony Leung Chiu Wai - Chow Mo-Wan
• Maggie Cheung - Su Lizhen Chan
• Siu Ping Lam - Ah Ping
• Cheung Tung Cho 'Joe' - Special appearance
• Rebecca Pan - Mrs. Suen
• Lai Chen - Mr. Ho
• Chan Man-Lei
• Koo Kam-wah
• Roy Cheung - Mr. Chan (voice)
• Chi Chi-ang - The amah
• Yu Hsien
• Chow Po-chun
• Paulyn Sun - Mrs. Chow (voice)
• Wong Man-lei - Koo Kam-wah
• Julien Carbon - French tourist (uncredited)

Awards

• Best Actor, 2000 Cannes Film Festival
• Best Foreign Film, 2001 César Award
• Screen International Award, 2000 European Film Awards

Miscellaneous

The movie forms the second part of an informal trilogy, together with Days of Being Wild (released in 1991) and 2046 (released in 2004).

While set in Hong Kong, the actual filming location of outdoor scenes was Bangkok, Thailand. The movie also incorporates footages of Angkor Wat, Cambodia.

See also

• Qipao
• Cinema of Hong Kong
• Christopher Doyle
• List of movies set in Hong Kong

External links

• Official site