In the Mood for Love

by Tony Rayns

  A premonition of things to come: Chow’s slippers and Mrs Chan’s heels

  The song continues over a shot of Chow’s feet in the crimson-draped hotel corridor. Cut: a shot of him alone and pensive in the hotel room.

  Cut to black (actually, a wall in the newspaper office) and pan past the newspaper staff having lunch to Ming taking a call from Mrs Chan. Nat King Cole fades out on the soundtrack as the pan reaches Ming. He says that Chow hasn’t been in for some days. Cut to the shipping office where Mrs Chan puts down the phone. She busies herself with Mr Ho, then takes a phone call – ‘Where are you?’ Cut to Mrs Chan (now wearing the bright red coat over her patterned white qipao) in a taxi. Cut: a quick-fire montage of shots of her legs ascending and descending hotel stairs, hurrying along the hotel corridor. The montage suggests her mixed excitement and anxiety. Cut: Chow is gazing out of the window of his room, smoking, when there’s a knock at the door. Cut: the corridor with its crimson drapes as Mrs Chan exits Chow’s room. They converse in the doorway. Chow asks her to call to confirm her safe return home – ‘Let it ring three times, then hang up.’ He adds that he didn’t think she’d come. Mrs Chan: ‘We won’t be like them … I’ll come again tomorrow.’ Chow closes the door of the room into the camera, and we see that the room number is ‘2046’. Camera tracks backwards along the crimson-draped corridor as she walks away; ‘Yumeji’s Theme’ starts on the soundtrack (sixth appearance) at the end of the shot and continues over a montage of them writing together in the hotel room. Most of the shots are lateral tracks, which constantly reframe them – often in front of the dressing table, which has a large three-sectioned mirror. (In the dressing-table shots, they are seen from several angles at once.) Umebayashi’s music fades as they break to eat and start talking.

  Decision and indecision: Chow and Mrs Chan approach room 2046

  The action resumes with more ‘role-playing’: they have reached the point where Mrs Chan asks her husband if he is having an affair. When Chow-as-Mr Chan admits it, Mrs Chan breaks down. They repeat the dialogue. The second time Chow says ‘Yes’, Mrs Chan says and does nothing, but looks emotionally overcome. Chow asks if she’s all right. Mrs Chan: ‘I didn’t think it would hurt so much.’ She sobs and moves forward to rest her face on his chest. He tries to console her: ‘This is just a rehearsal.’ Cut: a shot of the room’s red carpet with the shadow of the billowing curtain. Cut: Chow hugs Mrs Chan, seen reflected in a wall mirror. Chow:

  Room 2046: writing together as a pretext for being together

  Room 2046: role-play as a pretext for being together

  ‘He won’t really admit it so readily. Don’t take it so hard.’ The camera pans to the billowing pink curtain.

  Hard cut to the back of Mrs Chan’s head (she’s wearing a white qipao) as she listens to advice from Mrs Suen, speaking in Shanghainese. Mrs Suen warns her about gossip and urges her to spend more time with her husband. Mrs Suen has been out of focus in the background of the shot while speaking; she comes into focus as Mrs Chan bids her goodnight and steps away. Cut: Mrs Chan’s shadow on the wall as she returns to her room. She pauses in the doorway and looks back, under a light, then enters her room. Quick fade to black.

  The Siemens clock in the shipping office shows a few minutes before 6 p.m. Mrs Chan (off screen) takes a call from Chow, who wants her to come to the hotel to help him write. Cut: a slow pan over out-of-focus office decor to a waist-level shot of Mrs Chan saying she can’t come over any time soon. He asks ‘Why not?’ and she explains, ‘Mrs Suen lectured me last night.’ She ends the call and moves out of shot.

  Her movement is continued in a match-cut to a long shot (through a doorway) of Mrs Chan entering the kitchen of Mrs Suen’s apartment. She tells the Amah that she’ll make herself something to eat rather than going out for noodles, and the Amah persuades her to join them for vegetable won-tons. ‘Yumeji’s Theme’ starts for the seventh time over a through-the-doorway shot of Mrs Chan watching Mrs Suen and her guests play mahjong. The camera tracks into the room as Mrs Chan, standing, says something unheard to Mrs Suen, then drifts with her drink to the window and looks out pensively. Cut to a curious shot of her from outside the window: the camera rises over some black foreground obstruction, as if watching her from an opposite window. She turns away and leaves the frame.

  Cut to the film’s second flash-forward. A slowed-motion tracking shot across the window of a newspaper office in Singapore. The newspaper’s name, Singapore Man Yit Pao (Daily News), is painted on the glass. Inside, the group of men includes Mr Chow, smoking. The music continues over the shot. (The implication is that this is Mrs Chan’s premonition; she knows that Ping has already decamped to Singapore.)

  Cut to Mrs Chan (from behind) climbing the stairs of the shipping office. It’s evidently an overcast afternoon outside; desk lights are on. Mr Ho, at his desk, tells her that ‘a Mr Chow’ just called for her. The camera pans with her as she sits at her desk and starts typing. Cut: Mr Ho looks across to see her reaction to the message. Cut: Chow smokes in his newspaper office, waiting for her to return his call.

  Cut to the alley in the rain. Chow runs for cover, and finds Mrs Chan already sheltering. After commenting on the unusual weather, he dashes home to fetch an umbrella – which she refuses to use, on the grounds that ‘they’ will recognise it. She prefers to wait a while; he says he’ll keep her company. Long shot of them sheltering. Cut to a side angle of their faces as conversation starts; it’s a long-held shot. She asks if he tried to call her; he wondered if she’d got the message. He wants her to book him a passage to Singapore; he plans to join Ping there.

  MRS CHAN

  I didn’t think you’d fall in love with me.

  CHOW

  I didn’t either. I was only curious to know how it started. Now I know. Feelings can creep up just like that. I thought I was in control. But I hate to think of your husband coming home. I wish he’d stay away. I’m so bad! Will you do me one favour?

  MRS CHAN

  What?

  CHOW

  I want to be prepared.

  Cut to her slightly shocked reaction. Cut to a new angle: they’re seen through the grilled bars on the other side of the alley. Cut: the naked bulb of the street light, with heavy rain falling. Cut: shot of a puddle as the rain stops. Cut back to a tracking shot (seen through the grilled bars) of Mrs Chan pacing back towards Chow. This time their ‘role-play’ as they rehearse a break-up is indistinguishable from their own decision to stop meeting. Chow pulls his hand away from hers, walks away. She grips her arm. Camera cranes up to show Chow walking away. Cut: their dialogue resumes, the line between ‘role-play’ and actuality now non-existent. He says: ‘Don’t be serious, it’s only a rehearsal. Don’t cry. It isn’t real.’

  The alley: downcast gazes in profile

  The preludes to off-screen sex

  Cut to black (a wall fills the frame), then track left to show Chow embracing Mrs Chan as he consoles her. ‘Yumeji’s Theme’ makes its eighth appearance on the soundtrack. Mrs Chan sobs uncontrollably as they hold each other; there are three shots (two with foreground obstructions, the third without) before the fade-out. Fade in a shot from behind of a taxi driving through the night streets, with Chow and Mrs Chan visible through the rear window. She speaks in voiceover: ‘I don’t want to go home tonight.’ Inside the taxi, their hands touch. She slumps her head on his shoulder. Fade to black.

  Mrs Suen’s apartment. Umebayashi’s music fades out as the camera tracks through the room, lingering on the 1960s radio set which is relaying a music-request show. The woman announcer reads out a dedication: ‘Mr Chan, now on business in Japan, wants to wish his wife a happy birthday. So let’s all enjoy Zhou Xuan singing “In Full Bloom”.’ The old song (in Chinese: ‘Huayang de Nianhua’) begins with a few bars of the ‘Happy Birthday’ melody. Cut to a shot of Mrs Chan sitting in the kitchen, listening. Steam gushes from the rice cooker in front of her. The camera tracks left ‘through’ the wall to find Mr Chow similarly sittin
g alone in his room, facing the other way, and then back to Mrs Chan in Mrs Suen’s kitchen. Sudden sound of a telephone ringing. Cut: the camera pans across out-of-focus office decor to the shipping office phone, which rings unanswered. The ringing stops, and we hear instead the sound of Mrs Chan typing. Cut: the Siemens clock, showing a minute past 11 a.m. The sound of typing is eclipsed by a voiceover from Mr Chow: ‘It’s me. If there’s an extra ticket, would you come with me?’

  A poignant radio request

  An unanswered phone

  Cut to a slow track across the wall and curtains of room 2046 to Chow gazing out of the window. Nat King Cole sings ‘Quizas, quizas, quizas’ on the soundtrack. Cut: Chow turns off the light and leaves the room. He stands in the corridor with the crimson drapes; the camera tracks back from his stationary figure. Fade to black. Crash fade-in on Mrs Chan (in a green qipao) clattering down the stairs of the apartment building. Cut: Mrs Chan sits (apparently alone) in Chow’s hotel room. The song cuts out. Cut: the corridor outside, with the crimson drapes billowing. Cut: Mrs Chan cries in the room, reflected twice in the dressing-table mirror behind her. We hear her in voiceover: ‘It’s me. If there’s an extra ticket, would you come with me?’ Cut to black.

  Cut to a solitary palm tree against an azure sky. Quick fade-out. Caption, white on black: Singapore, 1963. Cut to the back of a hotel clerk’s head as he answers the phone. He says that Mr Chow has gone to work. Cut: Chow searches the floor of his Singapore hotel room, increasingly agitated that something is missing. Cut: in closeup, he asks the chubby hotel pageboy if anyone has been in his room. Cut: a brief close-up of the boy saying ‘No’. Cut: a wide shot through the open door of Chow’s room of their stand-off; Chow turns and re-enters the room. Cut: a big close-up of Chow’s fingers picking up a cigarette butt from his ashtray; it was smoked by someone wearing lipstick. Cut: wide shot of a mirror, reflecting Chow’s examination of the cigarette butt. He moves out of shot.

  Alone again or … Mrs Chan in room 2046

  Hard cut to a lateral tracking shot across a Singapore daibaitong, where Chow is eating with Ping. Chow tells the story about a man with a secret. ‘In the old days, when someone had a secret, he’d go up a mountain and carve a hole in a tree. He’d whisper the secret into the hole and then cover it with mud … leaving it there for ever.’ Ping is unimpressed and says that he’d have sex with a hooker to get over an upset; Chow repeats his line: ‘Not everyone’s like you!’ Fade-out on shot of Ping, smoking.

  Cut to an ‘empty’ shot of the staircase in Chow’s Singapore hotel. It heralds a ‘flashback’ to the theft from Chow’s room. Cut: close-up of Mrs Chan’s hand (with a ring on her middle finger) on the balustrade. Sound of Cantonese opera, off. Cut: Mrs Chan lies on Chow’s hotel bed, then stirs and begins examining his possessions. She stands, looks around the room, finds a silver cigarette case on the desk. New, closer angle: she opens the case, smells the cigarettes, then takes one and lights it. New angle: shot of a cloudy mirror, reflecting Mrs Chan as she lounges in a chair. Sound, off, of a phone ringing. Cut: shot of a wall-mounted telephone with the receiver cord stretching off screen.

  Telltale lipstick traces

  Cut: the Singapore newspaper office. Chow is called to the phone, but no one speaks when he takes the call. Nat King Cole’s ‘Quizas, quizas, quizas’ is reprised on the soundtrack. Cut to Mrs Chan in Chow’s room, holding the phone but saying nothing. New angle: she hangs up. Cut to a curious ‘abstract’ shot of the room, bisected vertically by a brown curtain; no one is visible, but the shot is oddly reminiscent of two other ‘redundant’ shots of decor. Cut to a floor-level shot (from under the bed) as Mrs Chan in high heels ducks down to pick up Chow’s slippers. Fade to black.

  Caption, white on black: Hong Kong, 1966. Mrs Suen’s apartment. Mrs Chan arrives (off screen) to visit Mrs Suen; she is delivering a boat ticket and has brought a gift. Mrs Suen is packing to leave, but can’t bear to throw anything away. (As at the start, Mrs Suen speaks to Mrs Chan in Shanghainese, but the Amah uses Cantonese.) The Amah fusses over Mrs Chan and insists that she should stay to eat. Mrs Chan says her husband is fine. Mrs Suen doesn’t know how long she’ll be away; she says she might rent out the apartment, since the Koos, her mahjong partners, have left, and her daughter in the US is so worried about the riots in Hong Kong. Mrs Chan moves to the window to gaze out, close to tears, as Mrs Suen reminisces about how nice it was back when Mrs Chan was a tenant. A reprise of Nat King Cole’s ‘Quizas, quizas, quizas’ starts on the soundtrack. A brief shot of the room with no one visible, then quick fade to black.

  An unconsummated phone call

  The song continues over a cut to a waist-level panning shot following Chow through the alley, carrying a gift box under his arm. Cut to an upward panning shot of him climbing the crumbling stone stairs. At the door of Mr Koo’s apartment, the new owner (unseen at first) says that he has no contact number for Mr Koo in the Philippines. Cut to a view of the living room from outside the open window as Chow enters and looks around. The new owner tells him that Mrs Suen has gone too (‘She ran away, like so many’) and mentions that the next-door apartment is now occupied by a woman and her ‘cute’ son. Cut to the corridor as Chow leaves, pressing his gift box on the new owner. Chow pauses outside the door of the other apartment. New angle: he turns and starts down the stairs. The Nat King Cole song ends over a caption (white on black) with another quote from Liu Yi-Chang’s writings: ‘That era has passed. Nothing that belonged to it exists any more.’ Cut to Mrs Suen’s former apartment. Mrs Chan, the new resident, prepares to go out with her young son. They say goodbye to the maid. Cut: a shot of the empty corridor; we hear the sound of their feet on the stone stairs as they descend. Cut to black.

  1966 reunion: Mrs Chan visits Mrs Suen and her Amah

  Caption: Cambodia, 1966. Cut to shots from a colour newsreel showing General De Gaulle’s arrival at Pochentong Airport on a state visit to Norodom Sihanouk and his queen. Cut to the motorcade taking them the ten kilometres from the airport to Phnom Penh. The French commentator notes that 200,000 people line the route – ‘an unprecedented welcome in the kingdom’. Cut to black.

  The colonial era draws to its close: De Gaulle visits Cambodia

  Fade-in on the ruins of Angkor Wat. A boy monk perches in a doorway, high up a wall, looking down at a visitor. The sonorous cello music composed by Michael Galasso for the film starts. Cut: big close-up of a hole in a wall, soon probed by an index finger. The finger belongs to Chow, seen in close-up as he hesitates, then leans forward to whisper something unheard into the hole. A stately wide-angle tracking shot circles Chow from a distance, showing the ruins around him. Then two close-ups (the first showing the back of his head) show the whispering continuing. Cut to a high-angle long shot of Chow at the wall, with the watching boy monk’s head out of focus in the foreground. Cut to a suite of five shots of the ruins, inexplicably alternating between day and night, the first two showing Chow leaving the site. Cut to a track-in on the hole, now ‘sealed’ with a clod of earth and grass. Cut to a backward track through the ruins, looking up at the faded paintings on the ceilings. Cut to another backward track, receding from a doorway. Cut to a lateral wide-angle track across the ruins, at the end of which Galasso’s music fades out and is replaced by the sound of crickets. Fade to black.

  Angkor Wat: a boy monk watches; a secret is sealed away

  Caption, white on black, with a final quote from Liu Yi-Chang: ‘He remembers those vanished years as though looking through a dusty windowpane. The past is something he can see but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.’ This is shown in silence.

  Caption, white on red: The End. ‘Yumeji’s Theme’ is heard for the ninth and last time as the end-credit captions appear, also white on red. The credits are timed to allow Umebayashi’s piece to be heard in extenso for the only time in the film.

  ***

  Across the story of two people whose spouses are having an affair, In the Mood for Lo
ve waltzes around the themes of fidelity and sincerity in relationships and then tries to resolve itself into a requiem for a lost (colonial) time and its values. We’ll leave the discussion of Wong Kar Wai’s aesthetic choices for our third chapter, but let’s say right off that the film is brilliantly sustained. As the scene breakdown demonstrates, it’s intricately structured but resolutely unconventional in its film grammar and framing and editing choices. It’s far more successful than most other films which create their own idiom as they go along, following – or breaking – their own rules. Some individual shots of Mrs Chan and Mr Chow, taken out of context, do evoke memories of the divas and matinee idols in Hong Kong/Shanghai melodramas of the past, but the film as a whole owes next to nothing to that genre. By the standards of ‘classical’ film language, the film is eccentrically plotted, shot and edited.

  It starts from the idiosyncratic idea of keeping the adulterous spouses almost entirely off screen: they are straightforwardly absent from the opening scenes, and are later heard but not seen – or briefly glimpsed, either from behind or concealed by shadows. Then they effectively disappear from the film entirely when their hapless spouses admit to each other that they know what’s going on. For a Hong Kong audience, the casting of Roy Cheung as the adulterous Mr Chan makes perfect sense: he’s known for his macho, extrovert roles in gangster movies, and is handsome but with coarser, less refined features than Tony Leung’s. Since Mr Chan is kept off screen, the viewer is left free to imagine him as an upwardly mobile chancer who seduced a good-looking Shanghainese woman into becoming his trophy wife; he has clearly shrugged off his working-class origins by reinventing himself as a businessman shuttling between Hong Kong and Tokyo. Probably it was he who liked his wife to dress in elegant qipao (the high-necked, form-hugging garment known in Cantonese as a cheongsam), although it was more likely her lower-middle-class taste which picked out those somewhat vulgar colours and patterns.