In the Mood for Love

Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) move into neighboring Hong Kong apartments on the same day in 1962. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. It is also a mesmerizing portrait of a Hong Kong in flux in the 60s, reshaped by new globetrotting jobs, imported goods, crowded rented apartments—and instant noodles and electric rice cookers that relieve the pressures of home, especially for working women. With its aching musical soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin, In the Mood for Love has been a major stylistic influence on the past 25 years of cinema.