When you think of the connections you share with other people there are many words we use to describe the varying level of that connection. It can be intimate, friendly, kin-like, or even as small as being acknowledged. So what do we call it when it doesn’t fall into any of these predefined descriptions?

By coincidence alone Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) and Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) happen to be moving into neighbouring apartments on the same day, they also visit said apartments at the same time to acquire them. Mrs. Chan’s husband is always away for long periods of time on business trips and Mr. Chow’s wife is always working long hours or away on business. Leaving the two married individuals constantly longing and feeling in a realm of solitude. Slowly they form a bond and spend more and more time with one another, till it begins to border on being inappropriate.

Wong Kar Wai utilizes intimacy to create this feeling of longing. We have these shots of Mrs. Chan at Mr. Chow’s door way waiting to receive the papers and her stroking the doorway as if to show a sense of sensuality about it all. When they’re writing together there’s a shot of Mr. Chow at his desk and Mrs. Chan standing beside him, neither looking at one another but they are in the perfect position to be able to look in the mirror to peek at one another. There’s this feeling of properly longing while still being restrained, as if for all of these moments if they allowed themselves to let it linger a second longer than it already did the proper would become improper.

Adultery is a strong word and has always been seemingly well defined in the construct of society. However, In the Mood for Love starts to question the limits of that definition and asks us when it’s worth re-evaluating that word. There is a point in the film where we are led to believe that Mrs. Chow and Mr. Chan are having an affair, whether together or separately is undetermined. When Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan decide to spend more time together it begins with the line of, “We won’t be like them” which admits to the dark road they are about to travel down but walks down it with the intention of it remaining pure.

So is it adultery when we start to see their bond becoming strong enough that they begin to roleplay being their own spouses as a rehearsal for whatever real altercation or experience their hoping to have with their real spouses? Is it adultery when they begin to knowingly sneak around their relationship to avoid questions from their landlords? It probably is. But there’s also good in the fact that the moment they see the bond becoming more than just a deep connection between two people with a common element trying to work through it that they stop it. They don’t let it reach the end point that their actual spouses have allegedly gone to.

Discussing the roleplaying aspect of this film I feel like, and I’m certain I’m not the first to hypothesize this, that Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan are actually husband and wife, or at last were. While it’s obvious that the film admits that their respective wife and husband do exist, we never actually see them on screen — which adds to their missing in each person’s life — and when we’re talking about two people who are willing to pretend to be the others spouse to the point of pretending to enjoy things they honestly don’t to keep in character I’m not certain as to what they’re not willing to do for one another. Maybe this is me reading too much into something that isn’t actually there in the film and looking for this one extra kinky element to their relationship that would make the narrative that much more sensual but it’s something I felt throughout the movie.

Where I take umbrage with is the ending. The film spends near eighty minutes on the relationship of Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan and a small portion of what is happening after that relationship with them. There is a feeling of some sort of poetic ending with how they both feel and continue their lives, mostly told through on-screen text, which feels unnecessary. Or at the very least lost in translation. Just like when Mr. Chow tells his coworker about how people told secrets to trees in order to get them out without divulging them in a way that would cause a true consequence the film didn’t need some of that poetic ending. Maybe I lost the cultural references with Cambodia and all but some of it just felt like too much of something that distracted from what was already a wonderfully palpable tale of love.

What do you think of In the Mood For Love?