In the Mood for Love

In the Mood for Love

In the Mood for Love is a 2000 Hong Kong film which was directed by Wong Kar-wai. Starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung who acting as two different pairs of spouses who are getting cheated on by each other’s partner. And this essay is to talk about the French impressionist approach toward the film.

French impressionist is a film movement which was developed after the World War I. Although France had been one of the centers of film in the medium's formative years, the trauma of World War I reduced the country to a struggling footnote in film history after 1918. Which creates new techniques in non-linear editing, point-of-view storytelling and camera work abounded. The movement is popular during the year of 1919 to 1928. 

The film movement focus on discovering psychological causes and also gives narration considerable psychological depth by revealing play of the character’s consciousness, concerns mental states, dreams or fantasies. French impressionism often manipulates plot time and subjectivity by showing flashbacks or memories. This film movement uses a lot of different camera movement and shots to show visual depiction of mental states through cinematography and editing. By using of irises, superimpositions, masks to show the audience characters’ thoughts and feelings. Visuals are distorted, filtered or vertiginous camera movement to show dizziness or drunkenness of the character. Using POV (Point of View) editing, rhythmic editing to show character’s experience of particular situations. The French impressionism often contains of smooth camera movement which are camera tied to cars, wheels, bobsleds, cables, etc. 

The film focus on the two different spouses which are Mr. Chow a newspaper editor move into an apartment with his wife and Mrs. Chan move in next door with her husband. Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan form a strong bond after both suspect extramarital activities of their spouses. However, they agree to keep their bond platonic so as not to commit similar wrongs. 

The pace of the film overall are slow, to show the mental state of the characters, which is the lonely and repetitive life style even though they are both married. One of the element can be found in this film is the mental state to show the character’s experience of lonely. For example, when Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan went for dinner alone in the noodle store, another scene is after the rain it shows the slow motion water flowing across the street to show the time passes and another scene is showing Mr. Chow was smoking in his office and all smokes are on top him which shows that the relationship between Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan are not clear which bring us to the next element of French impressionism. The scene where the smokes is above Mr. Chow is also related to the Mise-en-scene, which is background behind Mr. Chow is dark and the only light source is on top of him to show the loneliness. 

The second element of French impressionism is camerawork, there are some sub elements that is under camerawork which are camera distance, camera angle and camera movement. Example of close up shot used in the film is the scene where, the two protagonist are in a restaurant eating together, the close up shot shows the emotion and mood of the protagonist to the audience. This film also uses some interesting peeping shot and low angle to enhance the mood. The peeping shot in the film kind of show the audience that how other people think of Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow because of the shot. There is also some low angle shot that showing the slim and fit body of Mrs. Chan in cheongsam to show that she was a sexualize woman. The reason why Mrs. Chan dress up so well even she just going out for a dinner, its shows that she was lonely and wanted attention so that she will feel less lonely. There is also fast cut in this film. Which is the part when Mrs. Chan is going to meet Mr. Chow in hotel room after she received the call from Mr. Chow. The fast cut apply when Mrs. Chan struggling and hesitating whether she want to meet Mr. Chow or not, she climb up stairs and walking down the stairs. The whole film did not focus on the cheated spouses face and just showing up some others characters, because it’s mainly about Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan’s relationship.  

In conclusion, this film involved a lot of element of mental state to show the mood of the character. Also the smooth and slow camera movement also create the mood and relationship between the characters when they fall in love and they hesitate and struggle about their relationships. Overall the film is very interesting, because it was a new approach for me.