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In the Mood for Love

Fa yeung nin wa

Hong Kong, France

2000

95 Min
Color
1.66:1
French, Shanghainese, Cantonese
  • Currently 4.3/5 Stars.
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DIR Wong Kar-wai

PROD Wong Kar-wai

SCR Wong Kar-wai

DP Christopher Doyle, Lee Pin Bing, Kwan Pung-Leung

CAST Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Ping Lam Siu, Rebecca Pan, Lai Chin, Chin Tsi-ang

ED William Chang

PROD DES William Chang

MUSIC Michael Galasso, Shigeru Umebayashi

Cannes (In Competition): Best Actor, Technical Grand Prize, Jury Prize, Edinburgh (Closing Night), Toronto (Gala), New York, Rotterdam

Synopsis

Hong Kong, 1962. Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are polite and formal—until a discovery about their respective spouses sparks an intimate bond. At once delicately mannered and visually stunning, Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments in time. —The Criterion Collection

Director

Original

Wong Kar-wai

Born in Shanghai, he moved to Hong Kong with his parents at the age of five. Coming from the Mainland and speaking only Mandarin and Shanghainese, he had a difficult period of adjustment to Cantonese speaking Hong Kong, spending hours in movie theatres with his mother. He made his directing debut in 1988 with As Tears Go By, produced by Alan Tang. It was a crime melodrama of the kind then hugely popular, and with heavy borrowings from Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1974), but already displayed one of his principal trademarks in its atmospheric and sometimes expressionistic color palette. It is his only box office hit to date. Wong went on to direct several more feature films in the 1990s, among these were Chungking Express (1994), Fallen Angels (1995), Ashes of Time (1994). His first major international recognition was at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival where he won the Best Director prize for Happy Together (1997). The filming of In the Mood for Love (2000) had to be shifted from Beijing… read more

Wall

Displaying 4 of 164 wall posts.
Picture of Carlos Rui Ribeiro

Carlos Rui Ribeiro

11May13

you notice things if you pay attention

Picture of SammyTodd

SammyTodd

12Apr13

If this film had a face, it would be a supermodel. Like, actually. I will admit, the repetitive violin music became a little irritating, but the other motifs were 100% meaningful and TRANS-CINEMATIC (oh, auteurs, you kill me).

Picture of sewslow

sewslow

14Mar13

If this is Wong, then I don't want to be right.

Domas and 18 others like this

yoga of love, sws, captain, Sveta, youleeah, zara cezara bizara, luella, tiago, Celia, Margie D., Miguel Ferreira, Michael Dallape, Mayra, Ryan Pearce, Cineastic, Ben Haden, Marcus Killerby, Vandad

Picture of me-too-modula

me-too-modula

11Mar13

...speechless.

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Articles

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Lists

Displaying 5 of 1273 lists.

Reviews

Displaying 4 of 8

The aesthetic amalgam

By Rahul Jain on August 8, 2011

The Aesthetic Amalgam

Is it in the name? Yes it is. Wong Kar Wai came up with the name “In the mood for love” in a hurried response to a passing Cannes submission deadline. Nothing could better…  read review

A Failed Romance, In More Ways Than One(Possible Spoilers)

By Christo​pher M. Jones on June 5, 2011

Here’s my problem with this movie.

I think that a non-romance romance has the potential to be a really emotionally brutal, heart-wrenching affair. This movie is not that for a couple of reasons…  read review

6 SENSES The Mood Of In the Mood for Love

By soiwasw​rong on November 26, 2010
For others it may bore them to death but for me its not… I watched this film when I was in high school because my sister’s freind happens to have a copy of it. And when I’ve heard about the title it’s…

In the Mood for Love

By Antoniu​s Block on August 22, 2010

Forum

Displaying 7 discussion topics.

What is Wong Kar-wai saying beyond the obvious?

67 posts by 17 people 3 months ago

Sensuous romance films

23 posts by 14 people 3 months ago

The active and passive entitiness of the camera

15 posts by 10 people over 1 year ago

A True Beautiful Romantic Film From Kong-Wai

10 posts by 9 people about 3 years ago

Interpretations of In The Mood For Love

3 posts by 3 people over 3 years ago

DVD

Buy the DVD from The Criterion Collection.