I have been puzzled by the film “In the Mood for Love” over years. One of my and many’s favorite, it is one of the world classics thanks to its masterful cinematography, and editing, use of colors, montages and music, not to mention the dazzling visual presentation of the two stars. The story is simple, the dialogue is minimalist. Every frame is essential and crucial with little to no transition between them. You need to pay attention to every detail to get the sense of the passing of time, changing of space, fluctuations of mood: the Qi-pao she wears, the food they eat, the wall paper of the rooms, the color of the telephones, the pattern of the neckties, the way they sat to each other, the position of the clock hands, the direction she walks the stairs, the way he looks, the fleeting smiles on his face.
I’ve been feeling like a self-absorbent detective, watching the film again and again, trying to solve the mystery of their not being together. I am not satisfied with the answer of personal moral constraint or social pressure, or even the innate personality of shyness and passiveness, which have been conversed and concluded by so many reviews, as if it’s just a pure story of masterfully suppressed love filled with longing and missing. Even if he was not sure if she would leave her cheating husband to follow him to Singapore, by the time she made it all the way from Hong Kong to his room in Singapore, took away her slippers that he had been carrying with him all this time, called him from his room while he was working in the newspaper office but without saying a word, he should have known about her feelings towards him, that he could be together with her if he wanted to, but he didn’t. He never wanted actually, not because of any moral constraint, or social pressure, or lack of courage, but because that was never part of his plan. Yes, he had a plan, and the plan was to seduce her, and to abandon her, in order to punish her husband who has an affair with his wife, or simply to punish her because she holds herself so high that she keeps saying that she is not like his wife. It is hard for me and probably many, to perceive him as a player and a schemer. That would totally destroy the innocent and noble image of the two loving birds, but looking even closer to his facial expressions, and listening more carefully to his conversations with his closest friend A-Bing, that is the only answer to the agonizing question of them not being together. His plan went very well, except that he found him falling in love with her as well. He is not plagued by morality, but guilt. Morality is passed to us from the society and you could shake if off. Guilt is caused by yourself, and there’s no way to run away from it. A newspaper reporter and amateur martial arts novel writer, his closest friend is a street gangster who gambles on horse matches even when he is hospitalized, and after losing the gamble, goes straight to a brothel with no money left and has to leave his ID there, cannot buy back his ID after the deadline and comes to borrow money from him, he is definitely a much more sophisticated person as shown in this film. What we see is just the tip of an iceberg, which doesn’t emerge fully until in the equally masterful film of 2046, where he evolves into a womanizer. The idea of him planning to seduce and abandon her is not my original thought. I have learnt this from some in-depth reviews written in Chinese. I searched to see if there’s any review in English with the similar idea, but none. Though everyone is entitled to have their own understanding and interpretation of the film, I cannot help lamenting about how much gets lost in translation, when presenting to an audience of another culture. I have similar feelings about another one of my favorite Chinese films: Comrades, Almost a Love Story. All of the reviews I read in English simply regard it as a love story full of unbelievable accidents, fates and predictions, a love story that spans a decade, and over two continents, with a cliched happy ending, even though the title of the film clearly states that it is just “almost” a love story, that it is about two “comrades”. The comrades who are indeed lovers are not separated by wars, conspiracy or any third party, and tried their best to be together, as a typical epic love film would be. Instead, they are not together simply because she chose to out of her own will, and she made that choice not once, but twice. And the most interesting and cultural part of this film is to understand why she would make that choice again and again. The reviews I read in English never come to ask this question, the ones I read in Chinese do. And your answer to this question reflects your own values and experiences. To share a bit of mine: I totally understand and may even agree with her choices. What about you?
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May 2024
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