by Tony Rayns
Two consecutive shots of the hotel lobby where Mrs Chow works; and laborious Chinese typesetting in the newspaper office
Hard cut to the newspaper office for a scene centred on Mr Chow’s banter with his randy colleague Ah Ping, who has made a delivery to Mrs Chan in the shipping office and has deliberately left his hat there, giving him an excuse to return. Chow ridicules his hopes of seducing Mrs Chan, and his general enthusiasm for extramarital sex (‘I’m not like you’), but cannot forestall Ping’s plan to visit’s Chow’s apartment that evening.
Hard cut: Mrs Chan rings the doorbell of Koo’s apartment. Chow comes to the door and twigs immediately that she wants to borrow a newspaper to keep up with a story that it’s serialising. Chow (initially off screen) offers to find the paper for her. Cut to a new angle: Chow and Mrs Chan are seen reflected in an old, blemished mirror in Koo’s living room. Mrs Chan peers into the room from the doorway. Chow talks about loving serials so much he thought of writing one himself. ‘I couldn’t get started, so I gave up.’ He offers to lend Mrs Chan his own collection; she says, ‘Some other time.’ Their brief conversation is broken up into six shots. In the last one, Chow closes Koo’s door into the camera. Hard cut to the corridor, some days or weeks later. Mrs Chan knocks at Koo’s open door and is answered by Mrs Koo. She wants to return the serials she borrowed from Mr Chow. Mrs Koo explains that Chow is away for a few days: ‘They had a quarrel.’ Cut: Mrs Chan hands her the pile of books, seen reflected in the old mirror; Mrs Chan leaves. Close-up (with a slight crane up) on the pile of books, placed on the sideboard beside a clock. Fade-out.
Chow speaks to the unseen Chan; compare with the shot on p. 12
The hotel reception desk, seen as before through the oval hatch. Mrs Chow (not seen) tells her husband on the phone that she is stuck there late, on a replacement shift. The back of her head is briefly glimpsed as she ends the call. Hard cut to a similarly framed shot:
‘Through a dusty windowpane’: a neighbourly exchange seen in a mottled mirror
Mr Chow is at the desk, asking for her. A man (seen from behind) tells him that she’s gone. ‘Didn’t she tell you she was off early today?’ Chow says ‘She never remembers to’ and leaves. Cut to a shot of Chow thinking dark thoughts, against an alley wall.
‘Yumeji’s Theme’ makes its second appearance on the soundtrack over the hard cut to a slowed-motion shot of Mrs Chan in a vertically striped qipao descending outdoor stone steps. She carries a thermos pail for the hot noodles she’s about to buy. Still in slowed motion, she waits in the daibaitong for her order to be prepared, then leaves, climbing the stone steps. When she exits the frame at the top of the steps, the camera lingers on an old street light and the wall beneath it, covered with scraps of old posters. Shortly afterwards, Mr Chow enters the frame and descends the stone steps, also in slowed motion. Cut: the camera tracks past a black wall to a medium shot of Mr Chow eating in the daibaitong. (The Hong Kong of the 1960s had street food everywhere, served at makeshift outdoor restaurants known as daibaitong. These disappeared from most areas in the 1980s, as Hong Kong’s Urban Council tidied them away into covered markets in the name of hygiene and public health. Some of the best daibaitong moved indoors and became famous restaurants in their own right.) Umebayashi’s music fades over the hard cut to another occasion in the same location. Mrs Chan, again carrying the thermos pail and wearing a green-maroon qipao, crosses Mr Chow on the stone steps and greets him in passing.
Hard cut to the newspaper office. Ping scurries along a corridor to Chow’s office and bursts in with a demand for an urgent loan of HK$30. He gabbles out a long, crazy story involving hospital, stitches, losing his shirt on a bad racing tip, visiting a whorehouse with only HK$2 and needing money to redeem his ID card, left with the girl as a guarantee. Chow can spare him only HK$20. (The conversation is filmed and edited rather eccentrically. The two men are first shown separately, and cross-cut according to no known convention; there is only one cut based on an orthodox eyeline match. The second part of the scene is filmed in wider shots of both men, complete with some reverse-angle cutting.) Chow agrees to join Ping for a supper snack when he’s finished what he’s working on. Cut: camera tracks past a wall to their table in a daibaitong. As they eat a late supper, Ping hesitantly tells Chow that he saw Mrs Chow in the street the day before – with another man.
Recurrent motifs: Chow looks for his wife, Mrs Chan waits for her noodles
Hard cut to a gift-wrapped parcel on a desk in the shipping office. The short scene details Mrs Chan’s role in keeping Ho’s mistress and wife apart; it emerges that the gift box contains a birthday present for Mrs Ho, chosen and bought by Mrs Chan for her employer. Ho thanks her, tells her to keep the change for her trouble and invites her to join the birthday dinner that evening. She declines; she plans to see a movie. Ho gives her the next morning off. Cut: the big Siemens clock shows 4.23 p.m. Off-screen sound of Mrs Chan phoning her husband. Cut to black.
Quick fade-in on the living room of Mr Koo’s apartment. Doorbell rings, off. Mrs Chow emerges from her room (it is too dark to see her face) to go to the door. Cut: Mrs Chow opens the door, seen reflected (from behind) in the mottled mirror. Cut: a long-held frontal close-up of Mrs Chan outside the door. She thought she heard voices and assumed the Koos were in, but Mrs Chow says she’s alone, back early because she doesn’t feel well; she declines Mrs Chan’s offer of medicine. Cut to a side angle as Mrs Chow (still unseen) closes the door. Cut to a shot of a table lamp in Koo’s apartment. No one is visible. Mrs Chow (off screen) says, ‘It was your wife.’ Cut to the now-familiar oval-framed shot of the hotel reception desk. Mrs Chow (off screen) speaks on the phone: ‘Have you spoken to your wife? … Then we shouldn’t make any move.’ Cut to a reframed version of the same view, then fade-out. Cut to a tracking shot along an interior wall to an old mirror, which reflects the empty room. Cut to a woman sobbing in the bathroom. Cut to a male hand (with a prominent wedding ring) knocking at a door. Fade to black.
Cut to the shipping office. Bustle, movement. Business talk, then chatter about Mr Ho’s birthday dinner that evening: Mrs Chan reports that his wife will meet him in the restaurant, and that Miss Yu has sent over a gift. Seen framed through a doorway, Mrs Chan makes Ho another coffee, then resumes typing, commenting that his new tie looks good on him. Ho is surprised she’s noticed it. Mrs Chan: ‘You notice things if you pay attention to detail.’ Cut to the end of the afternoon: Ho is leaving. Mrs Chan notices that he has changed back to his old tie. Ho: ‘The new one was too showy. Don’t forget to lock up.’ Cut to black.
The full-face shot of Mrs Chan (rather than a profile) heightens the impact of the off-screen lines
‘Yumeji’s Theme’ makes its third appearance over a quick fade-in to another slowed-motion shot of Mrs Chow carrying the thermos pail down the stone steps and passing Mr Chow on his way up. The shot holds on the old street lamp as rain starts falling. Cross-cuts between Chow sheltering in a doorway, brushing his suit dry with a handkerchief and then smoking, and Mrs Chan sheltering in the daibaitong, looking pensive. The music fades over a tracking shot of a puddle on the street; the rainfall slows. Hard cut: Chow and Mrs Chan, both wet, climb the tenement stairs. In the corridor outside the apartments, they chat as they fumble for their keys. Each has noticed that the other’s spouse is away but both have plausible explanations for the absences.
Mrs Chan enters Mrs Suen’s apartment and is greeted by the Amah, who says she thought of going out to find her with an umbrella. Mrs Suen (off screen) calls out that she could have eaten with her guests. Mrs Chan exits the frame and the camera holds on the empty doorway. We hear the chatter of the mahjong players from off screen: ‘I feel sorry for her, she’s so lonely, her husband is always away’ … ‘She dresses up like that to go out for noodles?’
Edging towards disclosure: Chow and Mrs Chan explain their partners’ absences
Cut: Mrs Chan climbs the tenement stairs, wearing a horizontal-striped qipao. Outside Mrs Suen�
�s door, she is reaching for her key when Mr Chow opens it from inside. He explains that he was there to call Mrs Koo to the phone. He comments that she’s back late, and she replies that she went to the pictures. They go to their respective rooms. Cut: the Amah takes a call in Mrs Suen’s apartment. It’s for Mrs Chan.
Cut to an oddly framed shot of a jukebox in a new location: a western-style restaurant. Nat King Cole sings ‘Aquellos ojos verdes’ on the soundtrack. Chow and Mrs Chan are seated facing each other in a banquette, she wearing a floral qipao, drinking coffee. Their conversation is filmed in profile shots, sometimes cutting from one to the other, sometimes whip-panning. They edge gingerly towards the heart of the matter, discussing the handbags and ties (gifts from their respective partners to each other’s spouses) which confirm that Chow’s wife is having an affair with Mrs Chan’s husband. Mrs Chan (voice-off, over a shot of Chow’s cigarette smoke): ‘I thought I was the only one who knew.’ Fade to black. Cut to a night street. Nat King Cole sings ‘Te quieres deijiste’ on the soundtrack as they walk in slightly slowed motion. Mrs Chan (voiceover): ‘I wonder how it began.’ Quick fade to black.
Cut to their shadows on a decrepit wall. They enter the frame, now imagining and acting out what they guess their spouses said to each other when they embarked on their affair. (They are first filmed at waist height; their faces are then seen from several different angles.) This attempt to understand the mentality and behaviour of their spouses founders when Mrs Chan objects to Chow saying ‘Shall we stay out tonight?’ (He puts his hand on her arm, but she breaks away from him.) She doesn’t believe that her husband would have said such a thing, but Chow is adamant that Mr Chan must have made the first move. Cut: a tracking shot of them walking together, seen now from behind a grilled wall on the other side of the alley. They repeat the same dialogue, with Mrs Chan now behaving more coquettishly. But she can’t bring herself to imagine Mrs Chow making the first move; she walks off, bitterly asking Chow if he really knows his wife. She exits from a wide-angle shot, which holds on Chow standing alone.
Cut: the western-style restaurant. Nat King Cole sings ‘Aquellos ojos verdes’. Chow and Mrs Chan are about to eat together, she wearing a grey qipao with a large yellow flower on the chest. The conversation indicates that they are still ‘role-playing’ their spouses. Hard cut to a sidelong angle on the two of them eating; he seems more used to eating western food than she is. The scene is shot in close-ups of their plates, their hands grappling with knives and forks, and their faces in profile, the camera panning back and forth between them. Chow dabs mustard on the side of Mrs Chan’s plate; she’s eating a steak. Mrs Chan: ‘Your wife likes hot dishes.’ Cut: the song continues uninterrupted on the soundtrack over a quick pan to Mrs Chan eating in the same banquette. But she’s now wearing a striped qipao, indicating that this is another occasion. The ‘role-play’ has become more sophisticated. Mrs Chan: ‘You have my husband down pat. He’s a real sweet-talker.’ Cut to them sitting in the back of the taxi taking them home through the night streets. In close-up, Chow inches his hand towards hers. She withdraws.
Wisps of smoke for admitting the truth; shadows on a wall for role-play
Hard cut to Mrs Suen’s apartment. The Amah hands Mrs Chan a letter from her husband … but Mrs Chan tells her it’s actually for Mr Chow next door; it was the Japanese stamp that confused the Amah. She takes it to the next-door apartment; shot holds on Mrs Chan alone in the kitchen. Cut: Chow sits in his room and angrily crumples the letter he’s just read. He reaches across to close the door.
Hard cut to a close-up of the Siemens clock in the shipping office; it shows 1.10 p.m. The camera slowly starts to crane down as we hear an off-screen phone conversation between Mrs Chan and Chow. She asks about the letter and when his wife will be back. Cut to black.
‘Yumeji’s Theme’ makes its fourth appearance on the soundtrack over the film’s first flash-forward. Fade-in on a fixed angle showing an upper-floor corridor in the hotel where Chow will later rent a room to write in collaboration with Mrs Chan. Crimson drapes billow in the breeze along one side of the corridor; the image is redolent of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (TV, 1990–1). Cut to the interior of Chow’s rented room. He is there with Mrs Chan, she wearing a bold red coat over her qipao, standing in the light from the window. Neither speaks. She crosses the room to the door, in the background of the shot. Cut: rear view of a taxi moving through a night street; they are visible through the rear window. Mrs Chan (heard in voiceover) wants it to pull up so that she can get out first – so that they don’t arrive back home together. The taxi stops, and the gentlemanly Chow gets out. The taxi drives off. Umebayashi’s music fades as it starts raining. Chow dashes for cover. Scene ends with a long shot of him sheltering.
Hard cut to the same alley in daylight, seen from a nearly identical angle. Ping walks through the shot. Cut: he emerges from Koo’s apartment just as Mrs Chan gets back (she is in the foreground of the shot). She’s surprised to see Ping back in Hong Kong. He explains that he came to visit Chow, only to find that he has a bad cold and can’t taste anything. Ping will buy him some food; he says Chow has a craving for (strong-tasting) sesame syrup. Cut: inside Mrs Suen’s apartment, Mrs Suen calls for the Amah. Mrs Chan, cooking in the kitchen, tells her the Amah is hanging washing on the roof. They chat about shopping for Mrs Suen’s mother’s coming birthday and Mrs Suen’s new hairdo. Mrs Chan is making a big pot of sesame syrup.
Very hard cut to Chow bumping into Mrs Chan in the alley near the daibaitong. He’s on his way out for noodles (‘I’m starving’), and she’s coming home from the pictures (the movie was ‘so-so’). He comments that he used to enjoy seeing movies too. They chat about married life, about making decisions as a couple and giving up the things you used to do alone. Chow says he wonders what he’d be if he hadn’t married. Mrs Chan: ‘Maybe happier?’ Chow says he doesn’t brood on his mistakes, and that he’s embarked on writing a wuxia (martial arts) serial for the newspaper. He invites her to help, as a fellow fan of the genre, and then remembers to thank her for the sesame syrup – ‘Just what I was craving that day.’ She pretends that it was a coincidence that she was making it. They go their separate ways. A quick dissolve to a short shot of Mrs Chan heading home, then another quick dissolve to another shot of her turning the corner of the alley.
Cut: Chow arrives in the newspaper office at night. He’s the only one there. He sits at his desk, smoking. ‘Yumeji’s Theme’ makes its fifth appearance on the soundtrack over a slowed-motion shot of his cigarette smoke rising. Cut: tracking shot passes lace curtains to the interior where Mrs Chan sits alone, writing. Cut back to Chow, writing in the newspaper office. Cut back to apartment, where Mrs Chan is reading Chow’s manuscript as he waits in the background for her reaction; they are seen in long shot through the frame of a doorway. Umebayashi’s music cuts out as the image cuts to a white screen.
The white screen turns out to be a close-up of the light in the corridor outside the apartments. Camera pans down to the commotion below, exactly echoing the shot of Chow’s first arrival in that corridor at the start of the film. Mr Koo has got drunk (‘Again!’) during one of Mrs Suen’s mahjong parties and is being helped back to his own apartment. Chow, who came out to see what was happening, returns to his room – where Mrs Chan is hiding. And since Mrs Suen has moved the mahjong party to Koo’s apartment (to accommodate Mrs Koo’s need to keep an eye on her husband), Mrs Chan is trapped there. Chow tries to work on his wuxia serial; Mrs Chan queries the sudden appearance of a ‘drunken master’ character. (This part of the scene will be reprised as even broader comedy in 2046 [2004], with Wang Jingwen – played by Faye Wong – replacing Mrs Chan. The joke about illogicality in wuxia plots reminds us that Wong’s last scriptwriting chore was a rewrite with Jeff Lau on the all-stops-out martial arts fantasy Saviour of the Soul [1991].)
Cut: daytime in Chow’s room. The mahjong game still hasn’t ended, but player Mr Yang has to leave for work. Mrs Chan remains trapped in Chow�
��s room; Chow has called Mr Ho to apologise for her non-appearance at work. Mrs Chan frets that she’s been too cautious, since she’s always visiting Koo’s apartment anyway. But her innate caution prevails. Cut: a panning shot across Chow’s room. He’s asleep in a chair, Mrs Chan is on the bed. Cut: a floor-level shot of the room from under the bed. We see Chow’s slippers and Mrs Chan’s feet in high heels, and hear Chow say, ‘You can go.’ Mrs Chan dashes back to her own room next door. Later(?) she is intercepted by the Amah, who remarks that she’s back late from work and tells her that Mrs Suen is sleeping after playing all night. Cut: Chow stands smoking in Koo’s apartment. He walks off, suddenly decisive. Close-up of his slippers on the floor. Fade to black.
At this point, the film goes into a suite of interconnected scenes set in its recurrent locations – now including the hotel room seen in the earlier flash-forward. First seen is the crumbling alley wall, with the shadows of Chow and Mrs Chan preceding them as they stroll; when they enter the frame, we see them at waist height as they talk. In the next shot, they are seen through the bars in the wall on the other side of the alley. He has taken her to dinner to thank her for her help with writing the serial – because she refused any share of the fee. He says he’s being asked to write more; she worries that he’s taking on too much. He says he’s thinking of renting somewhere specifically to write in, somewhere she can work with him without being seen. Chow: ‘It’ll be more convenient. There’s nothing between us, but we don’t want gossip.’ She thinks that would be a waste of money, and adds that he doesn’t need her help anyway. She walks away and he half turns to watch her go, Nat King Cole’s ‘Aquellos ojos verdes’ begins on the soundtrack.