In the Mood for Love is a beautifully understated and heart-wrenching story of unrequited passion.
It's not just infatuation or even love that Chow Mo-Wan and Su Li Zhen feel for each other.
It's pure passion.
It's the kind of passion great lovers of literature have always felt whether they are the teen lovers of Romeo and Juliet or the seasoned lovers of Antony and Cleopatra.
You can see it in the way Chow and Su Li look at each other or in the way they can't bring themselves to look at each other. You can see it in the way they long to touch each other and in the palpable tension that exists when they are in each other's presence.
Chow (Tony Leung) is the editor of a Hong Kong newspaper whose wife works abroad.
Su Li (Maggie Cheung) is a secretary at the same import firm where her husband is the Japanese agent.
Because their spouses spend so much time abroad, both Chow and Su Li are lonely and frustrated.
They live in the same crowded apartment block separated only by a wall.
For Chow and Su Li that wall might as well be The Great Wall.
It's 1962 and they come from a culture that demands discretion, loyalty, modesty and abstinence or, at least they believe it does.
The horrible irony is that their spouses are having an affair with each other but even when Chow and Su Li discover the truth they are unable to rush headlong into a similar affair.
Unrequited love is a popular theme in Asian cinema.
What makes In the Mood for Love so special is the way in which writer-director Wong Kar-wai tells his story. From the camera angles to the lighting and the music the film is unapologetically romantic.
Kar-wai never shows the faces of the cheating spouses and when Chow and Su Li are in public most of the people around them are shown in shadow or profile.
Most of Kar-wai's colors are muted which is in direct contrast to the vibrant Nat King Cole tunes he uses to underscore the lovers' repressed feelings.
Both Leung and Cheung speak volumes with the tiniest of gestures.
Kar-wai only allows them to demonstrate the true extent of their feelings when the lovers play their game of rehearsal.
In the Mood for Love -- which has English subtitles -- is an exquisite film that shimmers with universal insights into the complexities of love, longing and passion.
(This film is rated PG)
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