This blog post meticulously examines how Wong Kar-wai’s ‘In the Mood for Love’ revives the fading memories and emotions of 1960s Hong Kong through slow motion, music, and mise-en-scène.
The Thread of Sorrow Woven by Director Wong Kar-wai
Is their sorrow like this? Memories lingering like hazy steam in his or her mind—those sensitive feelings they long to grasp, never wanting to let go for even a moment; those images, the scents within that time, and the emotions… Through Wong Kar-wai’s lens, the time of Li Zhen and Zhou was replayed like a wistful melody. It is a dark, sorrowful, painful, heart-wrenching poem of sadness for them, yet it is also a time that will never return, making it all the more longed for and poignant—the most beautiful and happiest moments in life, the very ‘In the Mood for Love’.
In a way, the subject matter and setting are quite clichéd. Him and her, a forbidden love, the gaze of others… While it is somewhat unusual that some commit adultery yet the protagonists agonize over their spouses, what is truly important to Wong Kar-wai, the main dish he sought to present, doesn’t seem bound by that. What matters is that those times have already passed, and the question is how to ‘replay’ them in the present. It is the filmmaker’s self-consciousness about how to ‘restore’ the fading breath of that time, the vanishing fragments of memory from the 1960s and the time and space of Hong Kong.
For those who have defined a Wang Kar-wai style or signature through films like ‘Chungking Express’ or ‘As Tears Go By,’ this film’s restrained gaze upon the repetitive daily lives of two middle-aged individuals might seem somewhat perplexing. Yet, this is unmistakably a Wong Kar-wai film: its unadorned yet intensely sensitive imagery, its visuals charged with an extreme tension that feels ready to explode at any moment, its music that expands the very fabric of memory. All these elements repeatedly declare this is a Wong Kar-wai film.
Why do I love the film ‘In the Mood for Love’?
I don’t particularly like melodramas. The world is already a place filled with dark clouds of frustration and failure. Why would I spend money to watch a gloomy story? And why should I cry my eyes out watching a tragic love story of sacrifice and oppression in a life already devoid of laughter? How refreshing are those lighthearted, upbeat rom-coms where the protagonists mock society’s gaze and stereotypes through their bumbling love affairs? Or those blockbusters where heroes crack jokes while saving the planet even as cities explode and humanity faces extinction? For these reasons, I generally prefer romantic comedies or fantasy. But…
My favorite genres don’t necessarily match my best movie rankings. There are films that uniquely draw me in even from genres I don’t usually like, and there are masterpieces I consider the best that go against my usual tastes. It’s like saying, “I don’t usually eat snacks, but OO is okay.”
In the Mood for Love uses recurring music and slow motion to replay bittersweet memories. It makes everyone revisit those old recollections, those faded photographs of nostalgia. The stimulation of old memories is truly captivating, gathering the small fragments accumulated in both consciousness and subconsciousness. Everyone has their own “In the Mood for Love” (the most beautiful and happy moment in life). Even if we didn’t experience 1960s Hong Kong or such a love, we can still participate in the replay of Chow and Li-zhen’s hazy memories through the cultural memories and nostalgia accumulated via indirect routes. The tightly woven mise-en-scène, slow-moving frames, and old pop songs work to convey the subtle emotions and memories of two people standing in a damp, dark Hong Kong alley. Within this setting, the two men and women—who love each other yet cannot accept themselves for it, and who gaze at each other uneasily amid society’s scrutiny—sucked me into the melodrama genre before I even had time to realize my negative preconceptions about it.
What is melodrama?
Simply put, melodrama is a ‘sad love story that stirs the emotions’. As a story about ‘love’—an unsolvable problem since humanity’s birth—it applies to nearly all narratives, leading some to argue it’s a style rather than a genre. If romantic comedies mock social etiquette and proceed as they please, melodramas are stories dominated and sacrificed by such social conventions. Fundamentally, it implies an ‘excess of emotion’. One definition describes it as ‘oppressive stories where pure individuals or couples are sacrificed by oppressive and unequal societies concerning everyday issues like marriage and career (Thomas Schatz)’. Another interpretation, as a compound of melos (music) and drama, sees it as ‘a dramatic narrative where emotional effects are musically composed’.
‘In the Mood for Love’ as Melodrama
‘In the Mood for Love’ is a melodrama. If we consider its subgenre, it could be classified as a melodrama dealing with married individuals, like ‘The Affair’ or ‘The Affair’. If social oppression and stress are characteristic of melodrama, I believe this film is one that best reveals such oppression through imagery. Let’s examine it through the three key aspects of genre grammar: iconography, characters and setting, and conclusion.
Iconography
Melodramas feature icons symbolizing social oppression. Images of confinement and oppression within spaces like window frames or kitchens are staged. ‘In the Mood for Love’ particularly emphasizes this aspect. The film effectively utilizes the narrow, closed-off structure of apartments and similar aspects of Hong Kong streets, trapping the protagonists within compositions and frames in multiple scenes.
The frequently depicted apartment dining room scene shows the stifling indoor space where multiple residents eat together in a cramped area, and within that, the characters are also trapped within the frame of a door.
In several scenes, the two are trapped by the car’s windows.
In the scene where they hide under an eave to escape the rain, their ascent is blocked by the falling rain and the mise-en-scène of the eave.
Scenes of the two protagonists walking together show them confined by window bars or surrounded by structural elements. (Though set against the backdrop of Hong Kong streets, like in ‘In the Mood for Love,’ it feels darker and more enclosed.)
Chow and Li-chen, who came to return the book, are trapped behind a fogged-up window, and Chow, crying alone in the bathroom, is also surrounded by a fogged window.
The oppressive atmosphere of melodrama is conveyed not only through framing and composition but also through the tone of costumes and colors. Li Zhen always wears neatly oiled hair and suits. Chow wears a traditional qipao that reaches up to her neck and high heels. Furthermore, the screen tones in the locations where the protagonists live (offices, etc.) are dark and even bluish-black, while Li Zhen’s cigarette smoke suffocates her, trapping her within the closed space.
Character and Background (Conflict Emergence)
Like other films dealing with infidelity, it focuses on a married man and woman. What’s slightly unique is that the spouses of those committing adultery are also having affairs. The apartment where the couple lives serves as the main setting. The apartment space is never solely theirs. It is a space shared with their respective spouses and simultaneously with other neighbors. It is a space existing as units of individual couples or families. Within this, the protagonists’ love can never be free. Their respective spouses, who have already committed adultery, cause even greater psychological burdens and conflicts (the conflict between betrayal and their own feelings).
Plot (Conflict Resolution – Conclusion)
Ultimately, the two abandon their love. This too is a kind of prosocial ending. However, Wong Kar-wai leaves room for multiple interpretations rather than providing a neat resolution. While it is clear they have given up their love for each other, nothing else is certain. Scenes suggesting they still long for each other are inserted, and Li Chen whispers something amidst the ruins of Angkor Wat, leaving room for interpretation. By giving up their love, they don’t seem to have returned to their respective families and reclaimed their original positions. Like the subtitles suggest, he and she faintly ‘remember’ their past. Though they hid that spark within the institution of society, it seems it still burns somewhere within them. With this open ending, Wong Kar-wai leaves Chen and Chow lingering somewhere in 1960s Hong Kong.
Outro
This film is not about ‘them’ who fell into an affair, but about their husbands and wives. The reason they can only be described as ‘them’ is because, within the film, ‘they’ truly are ‘them’ themselves. Not only do they have little screen time until the end of the film, but in most scenes, we never even see their faces, only hearing their voices. The director’s deliberate exclusion of them serves to re-emphasize the film’s focal point and creates a psychological distance for the audience. Because they are complete strangers to the protagonists and thoroughly excluded from the audience’s gaze, we can psychologically draw closer to Chen and Chow within the film’s frame.
Yet, even at this point, when the film might seem poised to delve into the protagonists’ inner worlds, their struggles, and their love, the camera’s gaze remains restrained and distant. It maintains a dry, cold perspective. Close-ups and long shots sometimes trap the viewer in their suffocating space, and at other times prevent us from drawing any closer to them. Thus, we have no choice but to submit to the director’s moving camera gaze and follow along.
The narrative progression is also decidedly unfriendly. Through omissions and leaps, without any dramatic explanation, it forces the viewer to pick up the scattered pieces of the story one by one and chase after them. And because these gathered pieces themselves are structured with repeated omissions, they leave room for interpretation and reflection. The actors’ portrayals follow suit. They are presented through extremely restrained performances. Their expressionless faces reflect this, as do their lines. All these elements—deliberately omitted, excluded, and restrained—are the director’s intent to guide with minimal intervention.
This step-back perspective maximizes emotion through slow motion and music. Scenes like the two protagonists passing each other on the stairs, brushing past in the lounge, or Chen standing alone in the market to eat, immerse us in the delicate replay of that time through identical music and slow motion. Even brief moments from the past can sometimes feel prolonged, offering fodder for lengthy recollections; thus, the replay of those moments and fleeting instants is rendered with even greater precision and emotion. As mentioned earlier, the film’s greatest virtue—and the mark of Wong Kar-wai’s painstaking intent—lies in how it ‘replays’ past time within the present. It restores the fading breaths of that era, the vanishing fragments of memory from the 1960s and Hong Kong. The director’s nostalgia is revealed through his signature song selection, slow-motion shots, and stop-motion effects, vividly preserving those irrecoverable moments of 1960s Hong Kong. It is, in essence, a contemplation on the fundamental elements of cinema: time and space.
“He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.”
The final line concludes the film, stating that it is about recollection and replay of the past. If you were them, could you forget that place, that hotel corridor where the red curtains fluttered, that mise-en-scène filled with memories of her from that era? What Wong Kar-wai expresses is precisely that return to that moment, that feeling, that breath of life. Yet the memory is so faint and sorrowful. That is why it is heartbreaking, why one longs to return, to reminisce. Perhaps the two of them, just as they once hid beneath the eaves from the world’s prejudices while sheltering from the rain, are now hiding within their own memories, sheltering from the rain of forgetting.
