To see its title in capitals on a cinema letterboard is something special that keeps me for a minute although I’m late. I wonder how it felt to compose it from the top of a ladder one letter at a time—I am sure up close they are bigger than one would imagine.
Moments later I take a pew in my favourite seat right in the middle, at a distance dictated by my shortsighted eyes. The seats, the walls, the curtains—everything seems redder tonight. I don’t even know if that’s the dominant colour of the screening room but so it is in my memory as I try to write something about it.
Whatever spell brought In the Mood for Love to the end of its troubled production is the same I am put under as the beautiful Cantonese text card appears on screen, and subtitled I read—Hong Kong 1962.
The first part of the film is paced by intimate angles, slow motion scenes, the music masterfully alternating a seducing waltz and a couple of Nat King Cole’s suave Latin detours. Wong Kar-wai’s love for his characters is palpable and contagious—we are soon in love too. Framed by claustrophobic urban interiors and narrow city corners, life flows almost unseen, muffled behind misted windows, steamy kitchens, the pouring rain. I wonder if Saul Leiter was ever a reference or an inspiration.
The second part takes a different tone as if dried up by stranded feelings, secrets too long kept, or simply time. Reality brutally interferes. Dreams become memories. What wasn’t said will stay unheard forever.
