I'm In The Mood For Love

Beside being a well known song from the fifties, the phrase is the title of a film made in Hongkong by Wong-kar Wai starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung and premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for the Palm D'Ore.  It is a favorite of mine although not of my husband. I have been wanting to watch it again for some time, and so last night he went to our other television screen to watch Jake Gyllenhaal in "Nightcrawlers" while I watched this.  It is the story of two young married people whose spouses travel a lot who by chance live next door to each other in the kind of impossibly tight, intimate living conditions familiar to Asians.  One thing leads to another obviously, and they become acquainted, romantically involved, but actually it is unclear whether they actually physically consummate their emotional involvement.  I suppose they must but it is never shown nor really implied.  The film is a visual study of two incredibly good looking people filled with sexual longing and excitement who pass each other in the corridor and occasionally go out to a meal together. The dialogue is so minimal as to be almost non existent. The film is unusually sensual for this reason, because you have to construct from what you see.  Seeing is everything, like an old fashioned silent film, because the director has a cinematographer who has brought out the incredible beauty of color and shape in every scene, while at the same time keeping things totally ordinary.  The one unusual feature is that Maggie Cheung who is physically superbly beautiful is dressed in the most ravishing street dresses slim and form fitting with mandarin collars the traditional Vietnamese style called Ao Dai, made of marvelous fabrics. Wong-kar Wai for this departs from the essential realism of the film to show her in a different and truly dazzling gown every time she appears which is a lot.  This is even acknowledged when another character remarks on her going out just for some noodle soup in a very fancy outfit.  The result is that the film is non-stop beautiful, with Cheung's beautiful body and the handsome yearning face of Tony Leung in nearly every frame.  Tony Leung was the star of another visual film triumph from 1992.  "The Lover," in which he plays a kind of rich Asian play boy who takes a teenage European girl as his lover and the film is essentially the most beautiful expression of sexual desire and ecstasy with no real dialogue but incredible visuals of two outstandingly beautiful naked bodies.  Despite the frequent shots of full frontal nudity of both actors the extraordinary thing about it is that it is not in the least lewd or salacious just incredibly beautiful sex; as in the previous film beauty quells the inherent physical desire. Both films are deeply moving for the feelings of longing and separateness that are invoked.  Dialogue is really unnecessary.  Yes, I would move on to watching "The Lover" tonight but I think my husband would revolt.  Evenings are supposed to be "our" time to watch film and we don't always really have the same taste in film at all, although we struggle to be accommodating.