ღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღ

                 In the Mood for Love 

                              I  LOVE this movie 

which makes my heart  ♥ palpitating ♥  &  ♥ trembling ♥ !       

                      For sensitive and romantic hearts 

                 For hearts ♥ in the mood for love ♥

ღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღღ

In the Mood for Love is a 2000 Hong Kong art film directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu Wai.

The film's original Chinese title is Huāyàng niánhuá (Traditional Chinese: 花樣年華 ; Simplified Chinese: 花样年华 ; Yale (Cantonese): fa1 yeung6 nin4 wa4), which means "Our Glorious Years Have Passed Like Flowers". This title derives from a song of the same name by Zhou Xuan from a 1946 film. The English title derives from a Bryan Ferry cover of the song "I'm in the Mood for Love" that is also used in the film.

The movie forms the second part of an informal trilogy, together with the first part Days of Being Wild (released in 1991) and the last part 2046 (released in 2004).

Plot outline

The movie takes place in Hong Kong, 1962. Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), a journalist, rents a room in an apartment on the same day as Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk), a secretary from a shipping company. They become next-door neighbours. Each has a spouse who is working and often leaves them alone on overtime shift. Despite the presence of a friendly landlady, Mrs Suen, and bustling, mahjong-playing neighbours, Chow and Su often find themselves alone in their rooms, and they begin to strike up a friendship.

Chow and Su finally admit their shared suspicions that their spouses are cheating on them with each other. Chow persuades Su to re-enact what they imagine might have happened between their partners' and their lovers, and slowly the line between playacting and real romance blurs.

Chow invites Su to help him with a martial arts series that he is writing for the newspaper. As their relationship draws closer, people begin to notice, and Chow and Su try to persuade each other that they will not end up as their spouses. When Chow gets an offer to work in Singapore, he asks Su to go with him. She rejects his offer and Chow leaves on his own. Four years later, Su and her young daughter visit an emigrating Mrs. Suen at their old lodgings. Chow, revisiting the place, narrowly misses out meeting up with her. At Phnom Penh, Cambodia, covering the visit of President Charles de Gaulle, Chow visits the Angkor Wat and whispers several years worth of secrets into a hole in a wall, before plugging the hole with mud.

Style and Themes

Wong states he was very influenced by Hitchcock's Vertigo while making this film, and compares Tony Leung's movie character to Jimmy Stewart's:

"the role of Tony in the film reminds me of Jimmy Stewart's in Vertigo. There is a dark side to this character. I think it's very interesting that most of the audience prefers to think that this is a very innocent relationship. These are the good guys, because their spouses are the first ones to be unfaithful and they refuse to be. Nobody sees any darkness in these characters - and yet they are meeting in secret to act out fictitious scenarios of confronting their spouses and of having an affair. I think this happens because the face of Tony Leung is so sympathetic. Just imagine if it was John Malkovich playing this role. You would think, 'This guy is really weird.' It's the same in Vertigo. Everybody thinks Jimmy Stewart is a nice guy, so nobody thinks that his character is actually very sick."

Two novel artistic devices are used in this movie. One is the use of seemingly repetitive scenes and the other is that certain sequences which look like one scene are actually a collage of numerous encounters of the two main characters in the movie. These techniques gave the audience the impression that these two characters were doing the same thing over and over again over a very long period of time. However, paying attention to the dresses (cheongsam) that Maggie Cheung wears reveals that she wore a different dress in every single shot in those sequences. They are more likely artistic shots with different costume and makeup for each shot.

Chow and Su's spouses are rarely shown and in those occasions their faces are not seen, resulting in brief one-sided scenes in which Wong uses only the angle showing either Chow or Su.

Title song

The track song Hua Yang De Nian Hua is based on a song by famous singer Zhou Xuan from the Solitary Island period. The 1946 song, used in Wong's film, is a peaen to a happy past and an oblique metaphor for the darkness of Japanese-Occupied Shanghai. Wong also set the song to his 2000 short film, named Hua Yang De Nian Hua after the track.

花樣的年華 The years slipped past like flowers...

月樣的精神 the vigorous light of the moon

冰雪樣的聰明 bright, clever as glacier snow

美麗的生活 our beautiful life

多情的眷屬 my affectionate spouse

圓滿的家庭 this happy and fulfilled family...

驀地里這孤島籠罩著慘霧愁云 suddenly gloomy clouds and fog loom across this solitary isle

慘霧愁云 clouds of gloom and melancholy

啊，可愛的祖國 Ah, my lovely native country

几時我能夠投進你的怀抱 when can I go back into your arms

能見那霧消云散 and see these fogs dispel

重見你放出光明 and behold you give off light again

花樣的年華 as in those flower-like years

月樣的精神 and of the moon...