In The Mood For Love Has Style To Spare, But Its Character Don't Quite Sparkle

Love makes people do crazy things, it's as simple as that. You'll buy expensive things for those you're infatuated with, you'll go eat at places you never would have gone to for the sake of going on a unique date, all that jazz. Movies, just like any other avenue of artistic storytelling, have been able to wring plenty of storytelling mileage out of depicting the lengths to which people will go to for the sake of romance, sometimes for drama, sometimes for comedy, but always as a way to tap into the universal notion of how powerful romance can be.

For the two leads of the 2000 Hong Kong motion picture from writer/director Wong Kar-Wai entitled In The Mood For Love, a little romance sounds like the perfect thing to break up their humdrum lives. Next door neighbors Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) both have not only more routine existences to cope with but they're both also married to distant partners that leave them unfulfilled. The two start out as friendly in a casual manner, but a bit of a romance blossoms between the two, one that, since it's occurring between two married people, isn't exactly socially acceptable, but they don't care. The happiness they're feeling is enough, at least for now.

In The Mood For Love strikes me as an odd movie, because while it's mostly perfunctory, it really fails to make an impact in the one area where it needed to excel; the dynamic between its lead characters. Since so much of the movie is reliant on naturalism elements like extended casual dialogue sequences, you really needed Chow and Su to work as characters in order to make those elements of the feature work properly. While they're not badly created individuals per se, it's hard to get fully wrapped up in their forbidden romance, which seriously hinders the intended emotional impact of the final few scenes which try to play off the melancholy nature of reminiscing about past relationships.

Honestly, I have a hunch that In The Mood For Love didn't quite work for me on a character level in regards to its protagonist simply because it's a bit too infatuated with coming up with odd storytelling quirks rather than trying to flesh out its leads or at least weaving in character development into its routinely avant-garde presentation. For instance, we sometimes see alternate perspectives on important occasions, like the duo's first date which is at first seen from a viewpoint that has Su being more shy and then we witness another version of the same moment where Su is being more outgoing with Chow. Similarly, the same narrative trick of having a conversation between Su and Chow seem like it's building up to them breaking up, only for it to be revealed to not be that, twice, with both times the build-up not quite being there for it feel natural for them to break up at this particular moment, meaning one is aware that something fishy must be happening from the get-go. There's similarly an odd editing style to the whole production that took me a while to get used to, and there's a lot about this movie that feels very much like it's going against conventional filmmaking tendencies in service of something more idiosyncratic.

I really do admire that boldness, and sometimes its more unorthodox elements really do work like a charm, but it can't help but sometimes feel distracting, especially when the characters so much of the story focuses on feel underdeveloped in some key respects. In a smaller-scale motion picture like this, where the entire movie hinges on the romance between two lead characters, they need to feel alive, their romance needs to feel like it's something important even though, in the grand scheme of things, no individual romance is really all that important, such as in Richard Linklater's 2013 masterpiece Before Midnight. Here, the two leads have decent enough chemistry (our two lead actors are super well cast, especially Maggie Cheung) that's coupled with a screenplay that never rounds them out to be truly organic interesting human beings. As a result, much of Chow and Su's time spent together just blends together and didn't strike me personally as all that engaging, despite the respectable gusto on display in the editing and directing.

All that being said, at least the movie looks spectacular. There's a genuine brilliance in the cinematography of Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping Bin, which comes out in even the smallest details. For instance, the movie habitually utilizes mirrors for some interesting framing choices while plenty of memorable shots are created from the slightest bit of action, such as Chow and Su walking and talking together. In The Mood For Love is such a genteel looking movie, I just wish its lead characters were similarly as well-polished since too much of the movie didn't quite work as well because of how they didn't quite come across as fully-fleshed out beings to me. It's an all-around decent and well put-together movie that I sincerely wish had more substance to accompany its experimental filmmaking tendencies.