Here is a 20-year-old event that the under-20s have not experienced. In May 2000, In the Mood For Love was presented at the Cannes Film Festival with all the legend that surrounded it since it was finished editing 24 hours before the official screening.
A table in 4K
This animated painting tells a platonic love story punctuated by a languorous waltz (Yumeji's theme by Shigeru Umebayashi) that imbues the work with a poetic melancholy. The film In The Mood for Love will soon be released in 4K to the delight of film lovers and people who wish to discover this monument of the seventh art. Magnified by 4K which makes the film even more beautiful visually. 4K allows a perfect rendering of the image, bringing it a very high brightness never before achieved with previous copies. The film plays a lot on music and sound, we now perceive the smallest details of musical notes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=399KPIbqNbU&ab_channel=LaRabbia Wong Kar Wai plunges us into Hong Kong in 1962 to follow the simple life of Mr. Chow (Tony Leung, winner of Best Actor awards at Cannes) editor of a small local newspaper and Mr. Chan (Maggie Cheung), secretary in an import-export company run by Mr. Ho. Both move with their spouses into the same atypical building where sharing and mutual aid reign. Very quickly will be born an idyll between their respective spouses, which will not remain secret for long. This situation will lead to their rapprochement. This is the beginning of a game of seduction.
In The Mood for love: A transcendent photograph.
The film is a hymn to cinema, where each shot is thought out down to the smallest detail. Nothing is left to chance, from the framing to the costume worn by the character perfectly embodied by Maggie Cheung. She wanders gracefully through the narrow streets of Hong Kong. If In The Mood for Love was not a film, it could be a parade as the outfits are numerous. Each of the shots gives us to see an impressionist painting that comes to life before our curious eyes and sometimes lost in the beauty of the image. The photography of Christopher Doyle (one of the best cinematographers in the world who works mainly in Asia) has a lot to do with it. She brings a meticulous magic that gives the work its special atmosphere, thus magnifying this platonic love story.
Slowness as an accentuation of an unspeakable relationship.
The proof is made that cinema does not need a complex story to be successful. Admittedly, the film has often been criticized for hiding behind an impeccable staging to hide the simplicity of its script. The slowness here is a deliberate choice that goes hand in hand with the story of this meeting of two beings who have abandoned each other. In life, isn't seduction a game of slowness? In In the Mood for Love she materializes the hesitation and dilemma faced by the characters. This modesty is also a character trait very present in Hong Kong in the 60s where everything was hidden. Wong Kai Wai wanted to make it very marked with the game to which the characters lend themselves. They play at being their spouse to better learn how to manage their reactions when the time comes. The slowness of the story is to be compared with the ellipses very used at the beginning of the film. The director chose to focus solely on the couple. Moreover, we never see the faces of their spouse. The repetition of scenes that serves as a marker of time. Like the one where the characters cross paths in a narrow staircase where everything seems the same but where in reality everything is different, starting with the attitude and the look of the characters that allow the viewer to immediately understand where they are in their relationship. It is all the staging of Wong Kar Wai that goes through its small details that are sometimes difficult to spot in the image but that make a big difference in the final understanding of the film. We can only regret that this re-release is not that of a longer version that would further multiply our visual pleasure. Originally the film was to last 2h30.
