In The Mood For Love
(Fa Yeung Nin Wa)
"In The Mood For Love", is a dreamy, personal movie built intuitively by the mercurial Wong Kar-wai. Though he intended to make a quick, comic movie about an adulterous affair in contemporary Beijing. After fourteen months of problem-plagued shooting, he had created a nostalgic drama set in 1962 Hong Kong, the story of boarding house neighbors discovering they've each been abandoned by their spouses who are having an affair together.
Happy Together
Fallen Angles
Days of Being Wild
The producers failed to gain permission to film in Beijing and an Asian financial crisis forced delays and a brooding Kar-wai repeatedly redefined the project. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle had to leave the project because of other commitments. Kar-wai abandoned much of the early shooting that had been in the quick, fluid style he and Doyle had previously employed in "Chungking Express" and three other of Kar-wai's most popular movies.
New cinematographer, celebrated Taiwanese Director of Photography, Mark Li Ping-bing, a frequent collaborator of Taiwanese filmmaker, Hou Hsiao-hsien. (Eighteen Springs, Flowers of Shanghai) brought a preference for formal compositions with beautifully balanced colors and contrasts. Kar-wai working with Li Pin, found a stately manner, with quiet moments, fixed camera positions, long takes.
The production moved to Bangkok where Kar-wai found architecture similar to the early '60s Hong Kong he remembered from his childhood when his Shanghainese family arrived from Mao's China. He reveals the story in the cramped quarters of a refugee's boarding house, directing the camera to view the adults as a child see them, from darkened corners, from behind furniture, through mirrors, windows, cut glass vases and fish tanks. Among many influences, Kar Wai acknowledged Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's "L Eclisse" (1962) where the actors were often photographed with their backs to the camera.
In another acknowledgment of influence, "I imagined myself as Hitchcock," Kar-wai told a crowded press conference at Cannes, explaining that he saw "In The Mood For Love" as a thriller, "a story with a lot of suspense, it has a typical Hitchcock story structure." He then admitted, "I hate writing -- I won't be Hitchcock, because I change all the time." He explained that he shoots his movies without a "real script," only an outline that includes dialogue, but lacks specifics. He concluded, "You can't write all of your images on paper".
The daily re-writing took a toll on leading lady, Maggie Cheung, who described a typical day on the project as "70 people on set ready to shoot while Kar-wai sits staring, waiting for inspiration". "Why can't he come prepared?", she asks rhetorically. Co-star Tony Leung's patience helped keep Maggie on the set as Kar-wai pushed through what he later described as, "the most difficult experience in my career." In the end, Maggie was thrilled with the finished movie, surprised by its beauty and conceded its remarkable quality would not have been achieved by orthodox methods or another director.
Wong Kar-wai found inspiration in "Intersection" and other short stories by famed writer, Liu Yi-chang. At one point, the movie project had the working title, "Three Stories About Food" influenced by the writings of Jean Antheline Brillat-Savarin in "The Physiology of Taste: Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy". The third story in the trilogy was of two neighbors who live in the same building and later discover that their spouses are having an affair, this story became the whole movie.
Even with the luxuriously long shooting schedule (or because of it), the movie didn't actually get finished, the lovingly labored movie remains unresolved, what happened to characters after or even before the movie lives in the imaginations of both makers and audience. Kar-wai ended it with a coda in Angkor Wat shot two weeks before the film premiered in the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. The scene, set several years after the main story, was tacked on hours before the showing.
Producers, actors and most of the crew saw "In The Mood For Love" (or "Fa Yeung Nin Wa") for the first time with the public in Cannes. Tony Leung won for Best Actor in his role as Newspaper man, Chow Mo-wan and the picture won Grand Prix de la Technique for Best Editing and Cinematography. The masterful cinematography and art direction, befits a love story, it is a tender work with subtle technique: sexy without being openly sexual, eloquent without being obvious, beautiful without being overpowering, and dream-like without ever leaving the realm of possibility. The camera stays on the captivatingly beautiful leads for long takes allowing us to absorb the subtlest expressions of emotion on their faces, thus communicating volumes while seemingly imparting little or nothing.
"In The Mood For Love" characters, like other Kar-wai characters, exhibit behavior which, while probable, perhaps even admirable, is not behavior we normally observe in life. In other Kar-wai movies, characters behavior is frenetic, sometimes overtly bizarre as in "Chunking Express when a character eats 40+ cans of pineapple, each marked with an expiration date equal to the date his girlfriend had left him 40+ days previous. The "In The Mood For Love" couple's behavior is not so obviously comic, but is decidedly odd. While admirably polite and sympathetic, their response to learning of their spouse's betrayal and abandonment is to role-play their spouse's affair. Chow Mo-wan is asked to speak words Su Li-zhen's husband might have spoken to Chow Mo-wan's wife. Su Li-zhen correcting him at times with, "My husband would not have said that". Their exercise is presented as a way to for them to better understand their abandonment. While this behavior may be nearer to a normal range than the canned pineapple eater, their actions seems not to have come from observed life, but from Kar-wai's imagination. It is precisely this contact with his imagination that we seek from Kar-wai films.
The couple, rehearses moments they fear they must face. Su Li-zhen practices confronting her husband's affair. She asks, "do you have a mistress?" then cries when Mo-wan acting as her husband answers, "Yes". For his part, Chow Mo-wan practices what he fears most, having to say a good-by to Su Li-zhen because her husband has returned. In their play-acting and practicing, they both feel real emotions, Mo-wan admits his love for her. But their moral credo remains, "we are not like them". Meaning they will not act out an affair even though they have fallen in love with each other. Chow Mo-wan decides to go away to Singapore, asks Su Li-zhen to go with him. She says, "No".
Kar-wai stated, "The privilege of being a director is that you can control time, In our daily life we cannot control time, this is the fun part of being a director." Several times in "In The Mood For Love", Kar-wai makes dramatic use of slowed motion heightening scenes of the two neighbors noticing each other. In the most overt manipulation of time, Kar-wai reverses the narrative timeline, first showing us Mo-Wan in his Singapore room looking for his slippers, reporting the missing items to the concierge, and puzzling over a lip-stick stained cigarette in his ashtray. Secondly, we see Su Li-zhen unannounced and alone in Mo-wan's Singapore room while he is at work. She playfully tries on his slippers, smokes his cigarettes, her lovely legs on his bed. She calls him at his office, hangs up without speaking, when he answers, leaves with his slippers.
As Kar-wai's developed the story, he enriched it with editorial rhythm and hypnotic use of musical motifs. An emotional Michael Galaoso cello composition commissioned for this project punctuates the movie, each repetition starting with the piece's first note extends longer than the previous repetition, underlining the couple's increasing interest in each other. With each use of the theme, Kar-wai slows the visual motion, as the neighbors pass in the interior hallway, on nearby streets, or a stairway to a local noodle shop. As the couple begin to rendezvous in other locations, a Spanish language Nat Cole pop hit "Quizas, Quizas, Quizas" (or "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps"), accompanies atmospherically, sometimes sounding like it's coming from another room.
The food in the film has distinct Shanghai quality, the Western dishes at the restaurant, the noodles and dumpling cooked up by Mrs. Suen and her "Amah", a combination cook, maid, nanny, and butler telling of the Shanghainese' former wealth (played by 91 year-old Chin Tsi-ang who was the first female martial arts star of Shanghai mythic swordplay movies of the '30s and grandmother of actor/martial/artist/director Sammo Hung)
1962 Hong Kong, was the scene of a vast influx of refugees taking advantage of a loosening of restrictions against border crossing to flee from Red China. Many, like Maggie Cheung, Wong Kar-wai, and production designer William Chang's families were from the more sophisticated city of Shanghai. People from all over the world and all parts of China met in Shanghai, rich and poor met in the bustling streets and created a particular urban syncretic culture that the Shanghainese carried with them as they, too, were displaced by war and revolutions. With "In The Mood For Love" (or "Fa Yeung Nin Wa") Kar-wai tells a personal story within the historic migration which had reverberations throughout Hong Kong society, including the development of a powerful, world-addressing film industry. Kar-wai pays tribute to the cultural power of Shanghainese in Hong Kong. He and Production Designer, William Chang allow Maggie to bring cosmopolitan Shanghai style to her demeanor and deportment as Su Li-zhen most strikingly by the dressing her in gorgeous Cheong sams. Su Li-zhen's Cheong Sams represents the more lavish life style she and her husband, Mr. Chan, enjoyed in Shanghai, during this period of housing shortage as Mr. Chan's wife, she displays her husband's wealth in her dress, since it could not be displayed in her home.
The style of dress, known in Mandarin as Qi Pas, represents Chinese style in the West, at the same time represents Western fashion to the Chinese. It became popular in China during the Republican Period. Here in "In The Mood...", the silk designs also reference the Japanese fashion of wearing Kimonos that reflect the seasons, one of many acknowledgments of Japanese influence during this period. Her Cheong Sams, more elegant than the shorter versions wore by Nancy Kwon and Jennifer Jones in "The World of Suzie Wong" and "Love is a Many Splendored Thing", still conjure up images of Hollywood glamour and Cold War politics, again, a symbol of Hong Kong as a feminized victim poised between British colonialism and Red Menace. Significantly here, Maggie's Su Li-zhen lives with the consequences of her decisions, does not allow herself to be saved by an American (or even Cantonese) Hero.
The Cheong Sam also resonates with other films from the Golden Era of Shanghai studios (1930 - 1940) as well as other Hong Kong, Taiwanese, People's Republic of China films about pre- 1949 Shanghai, such as Stanley Kwan's, "Centre Stage" (1992), the biography of Ruan Ling-ya, played by Maggie Cheung, again playing opposite Tony Leung.
Shanghai was a film center before 1949 - many filmmakers moved to Hong Kong. The melodramas and romantic involving, lost love, tau desires, melancholia, and unrequited feelings became hallmarks of exiled Shanghainese cinema. e.g.. Cai Chu-sheng or Tu Gurang-qi or Shanghainese 1948 film, "Spring in a Small Town" or "Spring in a Small City", directed by Fei Mu bears a striking resemblance to "In The Mood for Love" with its themes of unhappy marriage, abandonment, loss, honor, above passion and its sense of being chamber theater set in confined spaces, with a narrative focus on the couple.
"In The Mood For Love" opens with Secretary Su Li-zhen and newspaper man Chow Mo-wan, separately renting neighboring rooms in a flat owned by the maternal Mrs. Suen (played by former pop-singer, Rebecca Pan Di-hua) occupied by her transplanted Shanghainese friends, their distinctive dialect and traditional, regional opera filling the halls. Chow Mo-wan, being Cantonese, is intoxicated by the exotic Shanghainese and irresistibly involves himself with his neighbors.
Su Li-zhen and Mo-wan often pass in the hall and, occasionally, in the street, greeting each other politely and engaging in only the briefest polite talk. However, it gradually becomes apparent to both of them that their often traveling mates (played by Paulyn Suen Kai-kwun and Roy Cheung Yiu-yeung, who are heard but never clearly seen) are having an affair...with each other. This draws Su Li-zhen (or Mrs. Chang) and Mo-wan (or Mr. Chow) closer and, after a while, they even pretend to be their respective spouses, rehearsing confrontations that may never come to pass. While their attraction is genuine, each is hesitant to pursue their own affair, this reluctance is exacerbated by social convention and the ever-prying eyes of Mrs. Suen.
In the moment of the movie they are living in crowded rooms with remnants of their former wealth, some furnishings, some clothing, also the luxury of time devoted to friendships, and all-night Mahjong parties. To re-build their wealth, the direction they are choosing is represented by their fascination with the new Japanese automatic rice cooker. The miracle appliance would seem not to be of immediate need, because Mrs. Suen's Amah can stay in the kitchen to cook rice, it illustrates the refugees looking towards a future of less domesticity, where women will work outside the home and rely on trade and technology to provide for their families. The tie to Japan is underlined with a love theme borrowed from a Seijun Suzuki film. Also from Japan are the imported fashion accessories such as Mr. Chow's ties and Mrs. Chan's handbags gathered by traveling spouses and eventually become agents of truth, revealing adultery.
Su Li-zhen has some difficulty adjusting to the language and rhythm of Hong Kong. She is burdened in her role as a secretary in a small office, required to assist the infidelity of her boss, Mr. Ho (played by Lai Chen, once known as "the James Dean" of 50s Hong Kong Cinema in his first recent film appearance). She must lie to Mr. Ho's wife, and inform his mistress of their rendezvouses. She is sadly abandoned in a strange city by her traveling and philandering husband. She declines her landlady's invitations to meals, preferring eat take out Congee in her room. The movie lingers on Su Li-zhen's carrying her take out dinner pail to the local noodle shop for filling with her nightly sustenance, letting the repetition of this action tell the general story of loneliness, abandonment, isolation, and exile within the diaspora. Chinese women's prescribed roles no longer carry the same traditional weight. Take out food signals the dissolution of the family.
It first becomes obvious to the neighbors that each have been largely abandoned by their spouses. It then is painfully revealed that their absent spouses are involved with each other. Both abandoned by their spouses, and thrown together by the almost communal living of the rooming house, they hesitantly learn a few aspects of each other's interests and abilities. This leads to them writing a sword play romance novel together. When engaged in this activity in Mo-wan's room while the other rooming house residents are out they get trapped all night in the room by the unexpected return of Mrs. Suen and the Hoo's who immediately set up an all night mahjong game. Mo-wan writes at the desk, while Su Li-zhen uncomfortably dozes on his bed until morning when the mahjong party breaks up. She sneaks out of his room leaving behind her shoes.
Chow Mo-wan, represents Louis Cha (Jim Yong), a Shanghai emigree in Hong Kong pursued a career as journalist and movie scenarist wrote Wu Xia (Swordplay) fiction published in Cha's newspaper Ming Pao in installments. Chow's romance with Su Li-zhen which he uses as inspiration of his own martial arts novel, bears a strong resembles the type of unrequited love and star-crossed romance favored by Jin Yong.
Sent to cover French President De Gaulle's visit to Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 1966, Mo-wan visits Angkor Wat where he whispers his secret in a hole in a wall and plugs it with mud while a monk watches from above.
Included on the Criterion DVD, but not apart of the theatrical release are four deleted scenes totaling 32 minutes. Of primary interest is a coda set in the 1970s, featuring Paulyn Suen (seen most recently in Takashi Miike's outrageous "Ichi The Killer", where she is billed under her new English name, Alien Sun) as Mo-wan's wife. She knows of his past dalliances with Su Li-zhen and intentionally puts Mo-wan on the spot by taking him to Mrs. Suen's building. In another, we see Su Li-zhen, no longer Mrs. Chan, with a young son buying the flat from Mrs. Suen who plans to move to the US.
2 disc DVD package contains "Huo Yong De Nion Hou" (To Those Who We Remember Fondly), a short montage made up of endangered Shanghainese nitrate film from the 30's and 40's which Wong Kar Wai saved from deteriorating reels found in a Los Angeles Chinatown theatre. The montage, edited by "In The Mood For Love" (or "Fa Yeung Nin Wa") 's cinematographer, Mark Lee Ping-Bing, using the vintage pop song, "Full Bloom", performed by Zhou Xuan.
Leung and Cheung discuss how they dealt with Wong's abstract style of direction and storytelling, and we are also shown bits from the film's premieres at various festivals. "Interviews With Wong Kar-wai" consists of two segments (22m 12s and 15m 47s respectively) in which the director elaborates (in English) on such topics as the turns the project took (there was originally to have been two other stories) his thinking in regards to the characters and atmosphere, how films by directors like Seijun Suzuki, Robert Bresson, and Michelangelo Antonioni influenced his thinking, and the problems the Asian Financial Crisis had on the production.
In The Mood For Love
- Written and Directed - Wong Kar-wai (or Kar Wai Wong)
- Executive Producer - Chan Ye-Cheng
- Production Designer / Chief Editor - William Chang Suk-ping
- Directors of Photography - Christopher Doyle, Mark Lee Ping-Bing
- Original music - Michael Galasso
-
Additional music includes:
- "Quizas, Quizas, Quizas", performed by Nat "King" Cole
- "Full Bloom", performed by Zhou Xuan
