Without consulting each other, our authors watched a different Wong Kar-wai film and then chose it as their recommendations. What can we say? We were in that romantic August mood.
In the Mood for Love (2000) written & directed by Wong Kar-wai
This movie has been on a to-watch list for a while, and it did not disappoint. The cinematography is gorgeous, the actors are some of the most beautiful two people I’ve ever seen, and I am slowly compiling the tracks of the soundtrack right now. In the Mood for Love is a story about love and loss, and as cliche as that sounds, Wong Kar-wai wraps these themes in a strange, poetic beauty that will always resonate. And pack a gut-punch or two.
The two main characters in this romance are Chow Mo-wan, a journalist, and Su Li-zhen, a secretary. Both live with their respective spouses in the same apartment complex, and have adjacent rooms next to one another. Overtime, these two come to find that their spouses are cheating on them with each other’s spouses. We never see their adulterous spouses, which is a choice that I find so interesting in a film that is centered around infidelity. Instead, the film centers Chow and Su, following their developing friendship in the face of betrayal and their slow fall into love. The lighting in the movie is all shadows and dark corners, implying deceit and sneaking around. However, the viewer watches these two (absolutely stunning) people maintain a relationship that is completely devoid of scandal.
This film does not back down from the messiness of it all: Chow and Su explore the moralities of their friendship and their eventual love and what it means to be like their cruel spouses. Chow and Su act out scenes together, pretending to be one another’s spouses, trying to crack the code of how married people can cheat or why. The scenes get more complex as their friendship develops. Through their pretending, their feelings become more true, and in the end Chow and Su find out exactly how two married people can fall in love with someone else, and it plagues them. In the Mood for Love was a really great watch overall and I highly recommend it if you are a fan of movies like Portrait of a Lady on Fire or even something like La La Land. I think you’ll find something new and exciting in the classic tale of two lovers who can’t be with one another.
—Elise
Chungking Express (1994) written & directed by Wong Kar-wai
Of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, there is a famous phrase: A play in which nothing happens, twice. Chungking Express is like the play, comedic and at times absurd, but instead it is a movie in which the same romance happens, twice. The “acts” of the movie are two sides of the same coin, with a character (or group of them) in the second paralleling a character from the first. The form and structure feels like a play; the character quirks feel like a short story; and the creative visual display (“explosion” is an accurate word) highlights Wong’s cinematic prowess.
Each act of the film focuses on a cop who falls for another woman after a breakup. The first part of the movie unfolds like a mix between a noir and a romantic comedy. The lovelorn cop He Qiwu keeps calling his ex May, hoping to reunite with her before his birthday on May 1st. He’ll soon fall for a woman in a bar—in the credits she is only ever listed as “woman in blonde wig”—who makes a living through the drug trade. This criminal underground is by far the most outlandish plot in the movie, but still underscores how little we know about one another in a large city, even as we fall for someone. The second love story in the film mends this rift, with the cop (now the one billed nameless, as Cop 663) and his love interest Faye falling in love and successfully expressing it to each other.
The film sweeps through Hong Kong with fondness and apathy alike, and it is evident the film wants us to understand the psychological effect of the city on its people. Characters remain unnamed and anonymous, even to the audience. People crowd in the public spaces, noise and movement never stop. As our woman in blonde flickers through alleyways and cramped immigrant rooms, the nighttime shots become blurry and brightly-colored. The second story deals more in the daytime, but still floats through buildings, marketplaces, public walkways, and other city architecture—especially the famous escalator. An apartment becomes central to the love story of the second couple: Cop 663 displaces his hurt feelings about his break-up onto objects in his apartment, and Faye routinely breaks into the place to play around and clean the apartment up. This serves a touching metaphor: that those we are able to let in brighten up our lives in ways we sometimes don’t notice until later. The movie reflects the city–it is large, expansive, and sometimes overwhelming, but the little details shine above everything else.
When He Qiwi first speaks with the blonde woman, he asks, “Do you like pineapple?” first in Cantonese, tries another time in English, and then succeeds when he asks in Mandarin. The question as it relates to his character is equally funny and heartbreaking. But the question shows us what life and love and Chungking Express is about: trying to connect with other people, even if it takes chance and persistence and a little luck.
—Peyton
