147 In the Mood for Love

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feihong
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 12:20 pm

Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#26 Post by feihong » Mon Jul 16, 2012 10:22 pm

I love the film, and it is beautiful, but the other Taisho Trilogy films are far stronger and more affecting. But the other two have much starker attempts at film scores, and Yumeji goes much more lush and dramatic in that regard. Fans of Pistol Opera, though, may like Yumeji a lot, because, as in Pistol Opera, Yumeji puts forth a full cadre of intense, beautiful, close to bonkers actresses and gives them each large passages of film to steal. Kenji Sawada and Yoshio Harada get repeatedly blown away by the women--whereas Harada dominates Zigeunerweisen, and Yusaku Matsuda never loses any ground to the excellent Michiyo Okusu in Mirage Theater. But maybe it's part of the point of Yumeji that the character advances on these women, but never really measures up to their depth or intensity?

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andyli
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#27 Post by andyli » Tue Sep 18, 2012 2:22 pm


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feihong
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#28 Post by feihong » Wed Sep 19, 2012 2:05 am

Thanks for the link! It looks exciting. I saw this film theatrically a whole bunch of times; the caps stirred my memories of so many of those happy occasions.

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ryannichols7
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#29 Post by ryannichols7 » Wed Sep 19, 2012 10:22 am

my gosh..this could honestly compete for their best looking Bluray.

really hope they bring forth 2046 from Sony. the DVD is good but it needs this level of treatment.

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manicsounds
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#30 Post by manicsounds » Thu Sep 20, 2012 10:11 am


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triodelover
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#31 Post by triodelover » Thu Sep 20, 2012 10:29 am

Here we go again...

Zot!
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#32 Post by Zot! » Thu Sep 20, 2012 12:14 pm

These reviews are getting to be useless with this kind of disparity.
Not a hint of noise
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noise is constantly present

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MichaelB
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#33 Post by MichaelB » Thu Sep 20, 2012 12:30 pm

If I remember rightly, Gary reviews off a big television or monitor while Svet uses a projector - which is probably why I tend to find myself siding more with Gary when it comes to these spats.

Which is not to say that Svet's wrong - just that he's pickier than is necessary for me to judge whether something will suit my own setup, given that there's not the slightest possibility of me getting anything bigger than a 42" screen for many, many years, if indeed ever.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#34 Post by matrixschmatrix » Thu Sep 20, 2012 1:38 pm

I use a projector, and I generally find myself siding with Gary as well, but it may just be that my eyes aren't professional enough in these matters.

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Finch
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#35 Post by Finch » Wed Sep 26, 2012 3:37 pm

Just finished rewatching the film (50 inch plasma TV, Sony BD player modded; seen the film twice theatrically and multiple times on the second Tartan DVD): have to say it looks good but not great. Worth the upgrade for sure but it lacked the Wow factor that I was expecting for an HD transfer of a film with such exquisite textures and visuals. Not delved into the extras yet.

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Lowry_Sam
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#36 Post by Lowry_Sam » Tue Nov 27, 2012 12:04 am

I have to go with the yeahs on this one. The menu pic & music alone are worth the price, I like to just pop this in & use as a screen saver instead of my tv's. I've been disappointed w/ a lot of Criterion blus of late (probably because they are not doing there own transfers and are simply taking what they can to increase output), however this is genuinely impressive.

artfilmfan
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#37 Post by artfilmfan » Sun Dec 02, 2012 11:01 am

Love the clarity of the image on this Blu-ray release! Beautiful!

AnamorphicWidescreen
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#38 Post by AnamorphicWidescreen » Thu Jan 08, 2015 2:44 am

Just watched In the Mood for Love on the Criterion Blu - I agree this is a stunning print. The colors on the regular DVD of the film were great, but obviously they are far superior on the Blu.

The film definitely has a noir-ish feel/tone, i.e. rainy night streets w/shadowy figures, attractive & well-dressed women, neon lights, etc.

I did have a question about this film - is Christmas or the Christmas holiday referenced at all in the film? Or, is the film supposed to take place during Christmas? The reason I ask is because I just saw the movie again carefully, and didn't notice any overt or even subtle references to this holiday - even though I thought I saw this film on a list of Christmas movies a while back...

However, I know ITMFL's "sequel", 2046, takes place over several Christmas Eve's & there are many references to Christmas in the film, including holiday lights/decorations, the famous Nat King Cole Christmas song, green & red Christmas lights reflected in a window, etc. So, that may be the film I'm thinking of...I just saw 2046 after watching ITMFL, since they go so well together...

Raymond Marble
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#39 Post by Raymond Marble » Thu Jan 08, 2015 3:32 pm

AnamorphicWidescreen wrote:Just watched In the Mood for Love on the Criterion Blu - I agree this is a stunning print. The colors on the regular DVD of the film were great, but obviously they are far superior on the Blu.

The film definitely has a noir-ish feel/tone, i.e. rainy night streets w/shadowy figures, attractive & well-dressed women, neon lights, etc.

I did have a question about this film - is Christmas or the Christmas holiday referenced at all in the film? Or, is the film supposed to take place during Christmas? The reason I ask is because I just saw the movie again carefully, and didn't notice any overt or even subtle references to this holiday - even though I thought I saw this film on a list of Christmas movies a while back...

However, I know ITMFL's "sequel", 2046, takes place over several Christmas Eve's & there are many references to Christmas in the film, including holiday lights/decorations, the famous Nat King Cole Christmas song, green & red Christmas lights reflected in a window, etc. So, that may be the film I'm thinking of...I just saw 2046 after watching ITMFL, since they go so well together...
I've seen In the Mood for Love probably 100 times, and have read just about everything I can get my hands on regarding it, and I can't think of any Christmas references in the film, no, nor any implication it's set around Christmastime, or anything like that. That said, I have a weird tendency to up and forget obvious details of things I love, so if I were you I wouldn't take this as being any kind of last word on the subject. I could just be forgetting something, and maybe even something obvious.

AnamorphicWidescreen
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#40 Post by AnamorphicWidescreen » Fri Jan 09, 2015 1:55 pm

Raymond Marble wrote:I've seen In the Mood for Love probably 100 times, and have read just about everything I can get my hands on regarding it, and I can't think of any Christmas references in the film, no, nor any implication it's set around Christmastime, or anything like that. That said, I have a weird tendency to up and forget obvious details of things I love, so if I were you I wouldn't take this as being any kind of last word on the subject. I could just be forgetting something, and maybe even something obvious.
Thanks very much. I must have been thinking of 2046.


Raymond Marble
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#42 Post by Raymond Marble » Sun Jul 19, 2015 12:34 pm

Oh, that's good news! Though I thought Mr. Rayns was needlessly hard on The Grandmaster in the pages of Sight & Sound (which is the most recent Wong-related piece I've encountered by Rayns), his commentary on the Criterion disc of Chungking Express is interesting and useful, and of course he's one of our best living critics of Asian cinema.

Meanwhile, these BFI guides used to be somewhat ubiquitous in any bookstore's film section, but it's been some time since I commonly have seen them around, and I've gotten somewhat behind on what some of their new releases are. Looks like they're released a bunch of interesting ones in the past year or two; maybe when the In the Mood for Love guide comes out I'll just order a half-dozen of them in one fell swoop.

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#43 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Mon Jul 20, 2015 2:21 pm

Fingers crossed it actually comes out this time—the Rayns-edited Wong Kar-wai on Wong Kar-wai was announced and put up for pre-order, received one delay after another, and was finally dropped altogether without any formality (Amazon still has a listing for it!).

I agree with Raymond on Rayns' Grandmaster take, though his feature article on the film was less harsh than a parenthetical aside he made in an earlier piece about Snowpiercer (where he claimed that the Yip Man/Gong Er relationship was just a self-plagiarism of the Chow/Bai Ling plot from 2046, which I find wrongheaded for a number of reasons).

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FakeBonanza
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#44 Post by FakeBonanza » Mon Jul 20, 2015 2:35 pm

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:Fingers crossed it actually comes out this time—the Rayns-edited Wong Kar-wai on Wong Kar-wai was announced and put up for pre-order, received one delay after another, and was finally dropped altogether without any formality (Amazon still has a listing for it!).

I agree with Raymond on Rayns' Grandmaster take, though his feature article on the film was less harsh than a parenthetical aside he made in an earlier piece about Snowpiercer (where he claimed that the Yip Man/Gong Er relationship was just a self-plagiarism of the Chow/Bai Ling plot from 2046, which I find wrongheaded for a number of reasons).
The story of Wong Kar-Wai on Wong Kar-Wai is a bizarre one indeed. It is even listed among his credits in the author's bio for this BFI book (as being published in 2006, at that):
Tony Rayns is a British writer, commentator, film festival programmer and screenwriter. He wrote the screenplay for Away with Words (1999) and is the author of Wong Kar-wai on Wong Kar-wai (2006), editor of Fassbinder (1976) and co-editor of Branded to Thrill: Delirious Cinema of Suzuki Seijun (1994). He has written for Sight & Sound, Time Out and Melody Maker, and in the 1980s he presented a series called New Chinese Cinema on British television.

bradleyk
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#45 Post by bradleyk » Wed Nov 18, 2015 5:07 pm

Over 10 years ago, Panda asked:
panda wrote:I have the Criterion DVD, but I went to catch the film on the big screen. In their last taxi ride when Mrs. Chan says she doesn't want to go home, they join hands (for the first time) and there is a close-up of a red, heart shaped object (perhaps a marker for the key to room 2046).

This shot does not appear on the Criterion DVD. But I looked at the deleted scenes and in the Ankor Wat sequence he is shown putting that same object into the hole in the wall and covering it up with mud and grass. This shot was deleted from both the film and the DVD. But the earlier reference to in the taxi was in the film version I saw.

Can a kind member please enlighten me as to what is happening here?
I have a question for Panda and others: where/when did you see ITMFL? I ask because I'm wondering if ITMFL might have been shown in more than one version until WKW finally settled on the final cut that appears on the Criterion DVD?

Thanks,
bradleyk

Raymond Marble
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#46 Post by Raymond Marble » Sat Jan 02, 2016 12:21 am

I just finished reading the Tony Rayns-written BFI Film Classics guide on this film. As evidenced by earlier posts, I was very much anticipating this title, and my first impression after having read it is to be underwhelmed. Of course the big thing is the content--this is a skinny book (even by the standards set by the series--it's 95 pages, which is more in line with the series' older titles, and not the newer ones), and yet about half of it is a pretty thorough description of the plot with virtually no analysis (though disproportionately heavy focus on editing techniques), which he advises you to skip if you're very familiar with the film. This accounts for about 40 pages, and the last ten pages of the book is a "miscellany," which he suggests is just odds and ends that didn't fit nicely into the preceding sections. In this miscellany, a large chunk is devoted to doing the same thing with the deleted scenes on the DVD. So, over half of this book is redundant if you, you know, have the film. Which you probably do, if you're shelling out 13 quid for this book in the first place. This reeks of the book being a rush job to me, which is compounded by the miscellany in the back, which at best amounts to little more than a list of fun facts and random asides.

The much too small section between the plot synopsis and the deleted scenes synopsis is often useful and insightful, but even that section frequently rubbed me the wrong way. For one, he's entirely too flip with regards to people who ascribe time to be Wong's major theme. Funny, as the BFI previously published Stephen Teo's Wong Kar-wai, which does a fair amount with the "auteur of time" argument, and that book is a much richer analysis than this is. (As it stands, I'd venture that that's the best book on Wong yet published.) That said, Rayns does make a decent case against it, at least in the specific terms of In the Mood for Love, but I don't think it does him any favors to imply that the dominant critical framework applied to Wong is illogical without doing more to back up his argument.

Also, Rayns has a tendency to use his interpretation of the film as the only correct one, which I don't agree with. Given his work with Wong (more on that in a minute), if there is an objective truth to the matter Rayns would know it a hell of a lot better than I do, but one of the things that makes In the Mood for Love work is that it is so open to interpretation in what it depicts. Here, Rayns will point to some deleted scenes as proof that X thing did happen in the world of the film, but other deleted scenes are simply Wong experimenting with potential narrative turns and are to be disregarded. (I apologize for being cryptic here, but anyone who is familiar with the film and the deleted scenes will presumably know what I'm referencing here.)

Finally, I don't think it did the book any favors to have someone so close to the production write it. Rayns is mostly responsible for the film's English subtitles, he's a major contributor on the DVDs special features, and he worked with Wong and company for quite a long time before, during, and after this film's production. Not that that closeness necessitates a worthless book--quite the opposite, really--but it's not a terribly appropriate tone for a critical analysis such as this one. It suited the commentary track on Criterion's Chungking Express release, but doesn't work quite as well here. I had a similar problem with LD Beghtol's 33 1/3 book on the Magnetic Fields album 69 Love Songs--Beghtol was a featured player on that album, and the resulting book feels too insider-y and not critically objective enough.

And to make that point worse, Rayns has had a bit of a falling out with Wong in recent years, which Rayns makes reference to in the book. While Rayns is never outwardly critical of either Wong or the film, on occasion you do get the impression that he's trying to undermine Wong and some of the things he's done and said. It's like having François Truffaut write a BFI guide on Breathless. Or, you know, having Chris Doyle write this book, which would have actually been pretty cool, ha ha. Better than Rayns', anyway.

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hearthesilence
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#47 Post by hearthesilence » Tue Jun 21, 2016 10:40 am

Actually saw this screened at MoMA last night. The print they showed looked really good, very smooth and clean - moreso than the BD which could have used a better encode. In the opening titles alone, where the red background should be smooth, you could make the compression artifacts out pretty well.

At least the color on the BD was very good - the MoMA print actually looked a touch cool to me, like the blue part of the spectrum was a touch stronger than the rest of the palette. Using the red background of the credits as an example again, on the BD it really pops as a deep red, which wasn't the case for the print shown at MoMA - it looked a bit cool and right on the first CU shots in the hallway, the overall palette looked a touch cooler than I'm used to. Just a touch though.

Also one neat trick that doesn't translate well to home viewing: if you see this for the first time in a theater, there's an illusion of one scene abruptly ending to soon, as if the movie either ran out of film or cut to some clear leader. But it lasts for a split second, and you do hear something indistinct on the soundtrack. It soon becomes clear that the camera is actually pointed at a ceiling light because it moves down away from it and we see we're actually in the hallway, witnessing the abrupt return of the landlord et al. Seen off the BD, it actually looks wrong, like harsh blown-out video, and it feels like you're cutting to "white" abruptly intentionally - how can it not when you're watching it on a medium that never has the problem of accidentally letting a reel run past the actual content?

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teddyleevin
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#48 Post by teddyleevin » Fri Oct 14, 2016 1:07 am

Just saw this for the first time and can't say I enjoyed it. It was my second WKW after Chungking Express and I wanted to like it so very much; it looks beautiful and I love the costume and set design and found the performances to be subtle and nuanced, but in terms of content and form, I found myself at a loss. I groaned at the
SpoilerShow
final title cards which lack any ambiguity and spell out exactly what we already know (via blunt adolescent poetry). Nothing jolting like the great title card in Cries and Whispers, but instead just a narration of what we're seeing. The Cambodian coda would have been much more effective without it.
...but Brief Encounter makes me cry, so what do I know? But that's the standard to which I'll hold explorations of the themes of sexual repression and marital angst against. In this film, I didn't feel affected by them at all.

Formal and stylistic things that put me off:
- the slow-motion, often looking like a frame rate drop-off. I had to keep playing it back to make sure it wasn't an error with my Blu-ray. There are full shots with this effect but then other times it comes and goes mid-shot and just looks jittery, as do number of the tilts of that one clock that are awfully jittery. Unless there truly is something wrong with my copy of the film....?
- the repeated waltz (over montage). It's a not particularly fine piece of music, or at least doesn't stand up to that much repetition (internal repetition is tremendous, look at Koyaanisqatsi, but modular/wholesale repetition really ought to feel justified, or else it feels like they couldn't afford more music, as with the repeated Nat King Cole).. Is it wrong that I think "Dreams" is a better song and more worth repeat listens?
- scenes frequently ending in a sudden and sharp fade-to-black transitioning into the next scene which was not-faded-in. It seemed to telegraph the wrong message about the temporal relationships of those scenes and the tone and I consistently felt a hard cut between scenes would have been more effective (in a smokily nebulous way that would suit the film) than this distracting fade effect that felt like I was watching a TV edit.

Now, from watching the Special Features, I feel so much of this may just be up to his style, which at least I can observe consistency in after only seeing one other film by him, but Rayns' comments on his frequent repetition of music in his films doesn't exempt it from potentially being cloying and his improvisational style comes off to me as disorganized (and frustrates my opinion of the artist, though I try to disassociate) and is saved by the precision of the cinematographers (I've always loved Doyle, ever since I saw Last Life in the Universe, which is twice the film it could have been because of his contribution). I'm curious to know if he ever feels more refined than this? Or anything that would be more substantive narratively with less stylistic subterfuge? I'm fighting to appreciate this director, so let me know if there's a different place to turn to help recall my enjoyment of Chungking Express but bring his art into a more mature frame of mind.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#49 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Oct 14, 2016 12:17 pm

teddy -- felt much the same way. I wanted to like this but didn't (at least, npt a whole lot), for many of the same reasons you cite. Moreover, even Chungking Express, which I liked on first watching, didn't work nearly as well when re-watched.

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colinr0380
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Re: 147 In the Mood for Love

#50 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jan 20, 2019 8:30 am

I re-watched In The Mood For Love today for the first time in a couple of years after trying to wean myself away from constantly watching it in a loop for a while in the mid 2000s! I felt as if I needed to as a bit of a palette cleanser in the wake of Stockholm My Love, and I was glad to see that it still works incredibly powerfully even on the umpteenth time of re-viewing!

I love the way that the first hand emotions are abstracted through both the neighbours and workmates going through certain infidelities or disappointments themselves who don’t feel as deeply or painfully as our central couple, such as Ah-Pen spending money freely and visiting brothels, or the painful irony of Mrs Chan having to juggle her boss’s schedule between his wife and mistress (But which does not stop them imparting some chiding advice here and there, as if our central couple has transgressed prioprieties even more than even the adulterous couple have. Is that intentional or does it just feel like a bigger deal because of how delicate that central relationship is?), and the beautifully paired scenes of ‘play-acting’ as trying to understand who was more forward in the initial meeting splits into the scene of Mrs Chan confronting the husband with his infidelity and then of Mr Chow putting an end to the connection between himself and Mrs Chan, as the implication is now that their relationship has become more important than the one between each character and their respective spouses.

For a film about distressing disconnection in the most intimate aspect of one’s life that one can do little to nothing about, I particularly love that the cinematography, the shared interests of the characters and their entire environment is constrasting against that in some fashion, emphasising the interconnectedness of everyone. Everyone is sharing the same world, except maybe tellingly the adulterous absent couple who create the situation in the first place who are off doing whatever maybe with or without each other, and the film feels as if it is capturing that moment of existence in the ‘old era’ where people are 'playacting' a functional relationship but know in their hearts that they have to move on with their lives as certainties in previous relationships disappear. The relationship between Mr Chow and Mrs Chan is entirely arising and based within the ending of their current relationships, and so really cannot have a future (or at least not a future that would not leave a sense of the previous failed ones festering within it). It is maybe ironic that the actual marriages seem phantom-like whilst this smallest of relationship in the wake of the adultery is given such weight and power by the focus provided to it. Maybe it is not horrible for that ersatz relationship between Mrs Chan and Mr Chow to move on or end, but it is still powerful and full of meaning for the characters despite being so brief. Their moments of interaction are allowed to move fully into the space of the mind by the climax and left to beautifully exist as the sense of nostalgic reverie that they were always intended to occupy.

In The Mood For Love is also a very ‘analogue’ film in the sense that the film would be difficult to modernise in a world where people do not have to keep interacting by borrowing things from each other, asking for advice or for someone going on a business trip to bring extra goods back for other neighbours or friends. In an era where you can buy things internationally through Amazon easily or google the latest advice on “what to do about my adulterous partner?” online, it is difficult for such situations to exist now, or rather different situations would likely arise in the modern era compared to the one being depicted (including that sense of relationships being allowed to pass into memory, which perhaps would not be the case when Mr Chow and Mrs Chan could still ‘friend’ each other on Facebook or something!). That’s really what makes In The Mood For Love feel equivalent to Brief Encounter and its 'lost steam train era' romantic-nostalgic view of passing connection. Also In The Mood For Love’s intertitle “That era has long passed. Nothing that belonged to it exists any more” movement into the Cambodian coda is very like the bookends to Brief Encounter, although while Brief Encounter is entirely framing its story within its bittersweet reminiscing about a past, finished relationship, In The Mood For Love’s breaks are more judderingly painful and not as smooth, as events move from the staged departure preparing for the real thing, to physical missed connections as the apartments change ownership, to Mrs Chan being shown to have a child (though tellingly no husband. But she has kept on Mrs Suen’s housekeeper!) to the heartbreaking long, tracking, drifting nostalgic camera movements through ancient temples of memory.

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