Part of The Sight and Sound Top 10 (#5)
Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. 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. With its aching musical soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin (Winners, Technical Grand Prize, Cannes 2000), this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past two decades of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career.
This 4K digital restoration was undertaken from the 35mm original camera negative by the Criterion Collection in collaboration with L’Immagine Ritrovata and Jet Tone. It was supervised and approved by Wong Kar-wai.
“In Kar-wai’s world, mise-en-scene conveys as much information as dialogue, and characters’ clothing choices reveal sides of their personality they never express verbally… 20 years on, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE remains the ultimate fashion romance.” —Janelle Okwodu, Vogue “IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE's glory is its universality…. It's a film about, yes, love; but also betrayal, loss, missed opportunities, memory, the brutality of time's passage, loneliness.” —Peter Walker, Guardian
