In the Mood for Love
Tonight I finally got down to watching a movie I've been wanting to watch for a really long time, Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love. Some of you will probably remember it as "that movie starring Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Maggie Cheung where Maggie is always wearing different cheongsams". In a way, it is a really good description for the movie, but definitely inadequate. Describing it, I guess I would say that it is melancholic, sweet and right. As a director, Wong Kar Wai grasps well the fact that so often, you want what you can't have, and you can't have what you want. The two characters in the film circumambulate around each other, saying many things but not the most important... and that's how it often is in real life, we don't always have a pat answer or retort to the situations that confront us, or people who frustrate and upset us. The movie also treads between the realm of fantasy and reality.. as a movie it is a fantasy, and yet it tries to evoke real people's lives and real emotions. Will they get together or won't they? Can't they? Hmm, the movie also shows how some people trap themselves in the fate they choose, believing they have no other choice.. but they usually do!Anyway, happily enough I'm not really at a point in my life where this movie would cause me to feel constrained and despairing. I liked it though. I like that it's slow, musing, poignant and romantic, and makes me think about life and people a little more. My brother watched it with me, complaining that it made him feel 50 years older, but in the end he watched most of it. And so did my dad! Ha, guess not all guys are averse to art-house fare! *grin*
*Dreaming of cheongsams* - Elaine.
posted by Puz @ 11:44 PM
1 Comments:
Hey! We watched it together back in JC, remember? And we were completely baffled by it back then and we thought it was dreadful!! (remember the extremely long shot of the clock ticking?) Anyway my opinion of it's changed too, now that my school's teaching me how to pretend to be arty farty and all. :p Wong Kar-Wai's big on clocks and the fleetingness of time and the whole time theme runs in his other movies too. You might want to watch 'Days of Being Wild' and '2046'. Some consider them unofficial prequels and sequels of 'In the Mood for Love'.
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