In the Mood for Love

Wong Kar-Wai brings two neighbours together as they realise their spouses are involved, then never shows that affair: the spouses stay a voice and the back of a head. The closest scenes between Chow and Chan are rehearsals of how those two might have begun. It was shot over some fifteen months with no finished script, and Wong discarded most of it. Christopher Doyle left when the schedule ran over and Mark Lee Ping-bin finished it; both are credited. The streets are Bangkok, not Hong Kong: Wong says places that look like old Hong Kong no longer exist, so he used Bangkok’s Chinatown. Yumeji’s Theme was not written for this film either; Shigeru Umebayashi composed it for Seijun Suzuki’s 1991 Yumeji. Tony Leung won best actor at Cannes in 2000 and the film took the technical grand prize for Doyle, Mark Lee Ping-bin and William Chang. It won five at the 20th Hong Kong Film Awards: actor, actress, editing, art direction, costume and make up; best film and best director went to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A good fit if you read the repeated slow motion walk to the noodle stall, always to the same tune, as method not missing incident. Not for viewers waiting for a confrontation: it never stages one and leaves Hong Kong for Angkor Wat.