by Tony Rayns
Deleted scene: Chow and Mrs Chan awkwardly rehearse sex in room 2046
In the Seventies features scenes shot in Hong Kong before the unit decamped to Bangkok. In 1972, Mrs Chan is still married, and preparing to emigrate to join her husband and son overseas. She is getting ready to sell the apartment she bought from Mrs Suen, and arrives back to find a potential buyer chatting with her maid. The would-be buyer calls herself Lulu (she is apparently a singer from Singapore), but seems more interested in talking about her ‘husband’ Mr Chow and in finding out about Mrs Chan than she is in the apartment. The next scene shows Lulu’s bitter row with Chow in the alley near the building. She has brought him there because she knows (from Ping) that he used to live in the apartment nearby and had feelings for the woman who lives there now. She blames him for never telling her anything himself; he angrily pushes her out of his life, saying he never asked her to follow him. The third scene shows Mrs Chan, in slowed motion, going to the daibaitong for noodles – and still overdressing for the occasion, this time in a scarlet dress with a large fur collar. In the daibaitong, she finds Chow eating. The final scene starts with Mrs Chan on the phone to her husband (‘It’s very cold in Hong Kong’) and ends with her asleep on her sofa.
And The Secret Reunion in Angkor Wat features a chance encounter in the ruins between Chow and Mrs Chan, both there as tourists with groups. He says that he’s now working in Vietnam. She says her husband is in Phnom Penh, discussing a new business venture, and not worried about the threat of war in the country. She mentions that Ping is about to marry a Miss Singapore. They part with a handshake, but he calls after her with one last question: did she ever try to call him? She says she doesn’t remember. Chow is then seen placing a red, heart-shaped locket (seen once before in these ‘deleted scenes’) in the Angkor Wat wall before he whispers into it. Wong doesn’t offer any commentary over these scenes but he told me in 2000 that he shot them only because Maggie Cheung was so eager to join the unit in Angkor Wat: ‘She even volunteered to come along as the stills photographer … since she was there, we thought we might as well do something with her.’
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Wong Kar Wai has always had a liking for colourful supporting characters, and Chow’s hard-drinking, hard-gambling, hard-whoring colleague Ping is one of his best. The character is played by Siu Ping-Lam, in real life one of the film’s props men. Wong created the character for him midway through the original Hong Kong shoot, liking his ‘Sixties look’. Ping tells Chow in the finished film that he’s an ordinary guy and doesn’t have secrets, but his conversation with Mrs Chan in the deleted scenes starts with him telling her secrets about his chequered love life. Siu entered the Hong Kong film industry in the 1980s as a props man and had worked for Wong on Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time, Fallen Angels and Happy Together, as well as such films as A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) for Ching Siu-Tung and Green Snake (1993) for Tsui Hark. He had never acted before, but reprised his role as Ping in 2046.
Siu Ping-Lam as Ah Ping
Wong had form with this kind of casting. The manager of the Midnight Express snack counter in Chungking Express was played by ‘Piggy’ Chan, the film’s stills photographer.
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Cannes Film Festival, May 2001. One year on from his success with In the Mood for Love, Wong is invited back to give what the festival calls a ‘Leçon de cinéma’ but what you or I would call a sit-down Q&A with Gilles Ciment. The text of their conversation is usefully printed in Peter Brunette’s book Wong Kar-wai (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005). Before the session, Wong screens a previously unseen short film: In the Mood for Love 2001, again starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung. He says that it was shot before he made the feature, over two days and nights in Hong Kong, and was based on one of the original ideas for Summer in Beijing.
I saw this short only once, some fifteen years ago, and didn’t take notes – so I don’t remember it that clearly. It has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray, possibly because Wong didn’t clear the rights to use Bryan Ferry’s version of the Jimmy McHugh–Dorothy Fields song ‘I’m in the Mood for Love’ on the soundtrack. (However, there is a music video for the Bryan Ferry cover version on YouTube which uses shots and out-takes from In the Mood for Love and is credited to Wong and Jet Tone.) I recall that the short was set entirely in a 7/11 convenience store, that its plot hinged on a bet of some sort about food, and that it was very amusing. Most likely it will never be shown again, although its slim storyline was inflated to become the basis for Wong’s My Blueberry Nights.
Credits
Huayang Nianhua/In
the Mood for Love
Hong Kong/France 2000
Directed by
Wong Kar Wai
Produced by
Wong Kar Wai
Executive Producer
Chan Ye-Cheng
Associate Producer
Jacky Pang
[Pang Yee-Wah]
©2000, Block 2 Pictures
Production Company
Block 2 Pictures [Chunguang Yinghua] and Paradis Films present a Jet Tone Films production
Production Manager
Law Kam-Chuen
Production Supervisor
Wong Lai-Tak
Assistant Producer
Chan Wai-Si
Screenplay
Wong Kar Wai
Quoted Writer
Liu Yi-Chang
Directors of
Photography
Christopher Doyle
Mark Lee [Li Pingbin]
Additional
Cinematography
Kwan Pun-Leung
Yu Lik-Wai
Lai Yiu-Fai
Chan Kwong-Hung
Camera Assistant
Lai Yiu-Fai
Lighting Assistant
Kwan Wing-Cheung
Camera Crew
Ho Kin-Kwong
Ho Ka-Fai
Lau Tin-Wah
Chief Editor
William Chang
[Chang Suk-Ping]
Editor
Chan Kei-Hap
Production Designer
William Chang
[Chang Suk-Ping]
Art Director
Man Lim-Chung
Assistant Art Director
Lui Fung-Saan
Props Master
Wong Chi-On
Props Men
Tang Nau-Wah
Chan Ching-Nau
Siu Ping-Lam
Make-up
Kwan Kei-Noh
Assistant Make-up
Lui Si-Wing
Hair Design
Wong Kwok-Hung
Hairdresser
Luk Ha-Fong
Gaffer
Wong Chi-Ming
Electricians
Chan Hon-Sung
Kwan Wing-Kin
Assistant Directors
Siu Wai-Keung
Kong Yeuk-Sing
Continuity
Yu Haw-Yan
Sound Design
Tu Duu-Chih [Du Duzhi]
Pong Asvinikul
Sound Recordists
Kuo Li-Chi
Tang Shiang-Chu
Liang Chi-Da
Original Music
Michael Galasso
Other Music
‘Yumeji’s Theme’ by Umebayashi Shigeru ‘Aquellos ojos verdes’ by L. W. Gilbert and N. Menendez, sung by Nat King Cole ‘Te quiero dijiste’ by Marie Grever, sung by Nat King Cole ‘Quizas, quizas, quizas’ by Osvaldo Ferres, sung by Nat King Cole ‘Huayang de Nianhua’ by Chen Minxin, sung by Zhou Xuan The film’s end credits also list several other vintage Chinese songs and excerpts from traditional Chinese operas, but (with the exception of a short percussive clip from a Cantonese opera) none of them is actually heard in the finished film.
Some do appear in the ‘Making of’ documentary @ In the Mood for Love, which, incidentally, reveals how Wong Kar Wai at some stage thought of using them.
Visual Con
sultant
(Post-production)
Calmen Lui
Stills Photographer
Wing Shya
Video Documentation
Kwan Pun-Leung
Amos Lee
English Subtitles
Tony Rayns
James Tsim
Thailand Crew: Production Co-ordinator
William Lim Heong
Production Manager
Parichart Khumrod
Assistant Producer
Rattana Pulsawan
Production Assistant
Samerjai Bhoukird
Assistant Location
Manager
Satt Thepsawad
Props Master
Narong Osaypan
Props Man
Aunnop Wungbon
Interpreters
Alice Chan
Shirley Chan
Choi Yu-Yuk
CAST Maggie Cheung [Cheung Man-Yuk]
Mrs Chan, née Su Lizhen
Tony Leung
[Leung Chiu-Wai]
Chow Mo-Wan
Rebecca Pan Mrs Suen
Lai Chin
Mr Ho
Siu Ping-Lam
Ping
Chin Tsi-Ang
the Amah
Chan Man-Lui
Mr Koo
Koo Kam-Wah
Mrs Koo
Sun Jia-Jun
(voice appearance)
Mrs Chow
Roy Cheung
(voice appearance)
Mr Chan
Cheung Tung-Joe
New owner of
Mr Koo’s apartment
Screen ratio: 1.66:1 Running time: 97 minutes 58 seconds Colour, stereo