In the mood for love (Fa yeung nin wa) - Wong Kar Wai

Loneliness, Loneliness, Loneliness…the things it makes one do…

Some use love as an ointment for loneliness and rejection, while others redeem themselves of this anathema with the ambrosia of love. And then there are those, who look for the ointment, find the ambrosia instead and yet do not taste it.

This tale is dedicated to the third kind. It is about two lonely people. With each passing day, they are sucked more into the black hole of loneliness. As they gravitate towards each other, they realize that only they can pull each other out of the ineluctable traps they are in. The fact that they are married and their significant others are having an affair, is almost stated as an afterthought, as if this story was never really about connubial relationships, infidelity or love between a man and his wife…it was about the redemptive and healing powers of love between two strangers who have been left to find their way out of the maze of desolation.

Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chow are spending days in the absence of their spouses who are away on never-ending itineraries. A sense of monotony and solitude sets in, as they just walk around desultorily between places, among people, without any particular destinations in mind - carrying food, going to movies, typing pages, dodging rain, waiting patiently for their respective spouses to come back.

Even though Chan and So (Chow) cross paths quite often, they don’t really engage in conversations beyond greeting monosyllables, and although they are polite and friendly, they keep their distance from people around them. Over time, they develop a certain friendship, and one fine day, end up having dinner together. Over the dinner, they break the ice and discuss their spouses’ infidelity, confirming their own suspicions.

Calm on the surface, both are ostensibly going through emotional upheaval trying to come to terms with the facts. However, rather than going at it with a vengeance (literally!) and exchanging bodily fluids (more as a rebound than forging a relationship), they decide “not to be like them [their significant others].”

As they come closer, they start conjecturing on things like how, when and where their partners met. They also rehearse for their confrontation with their spouses, and pour over their marriages, becoming the sounding boards for each other. Exhausting their stock of marriage related matters and grievances, they start treading the territory between newly formed friendship and inexplicable love, more towards the latter. Chow, who seems to move on from his marriage, decides to write Martial-arts books, and So helps him out.

In time, a certain sort of intimacy develops between them - platonic in nature, but emotionally deep. Chan falls in love with So and so does she with him, but they never act on their feelings, weighed down by their conscience.

Aware that nothing will happen between them, Chan soon announces to a weeping So that he is leaving for Singapore, who turns down the opportunity to go with him.

Fast forward to one year later - So visits Singapore, rings up Chan just to hear his voice, and hangs up without saying anything.

Chan visits Hong Kong again three years later, and looks up his old apartment. Unknown to him, So lives at her old apartment with her kid (presumably from her husband). They are so near, yet they don’t meet up, comfortably unaware of each other’s presence.

The parting scene is in Cambodia, where Chan speaks into a hole in a wall, and stuffs it with sand, in essence, concealing his secret forever (In the earlier part of the movie, he narrates how old Chinese would whisper their secrets into holes in trees, and then cover them up). Those secrets out of his system, he moves on in life.

The movie leaves a huge question mark regarding the true relationship between the two. It seems evident that two were in love, but at some level, some loose ends have been left untied for reasons known only to Wong Kar Wai.

Most of the scenes in this movie are in slow motion, and the camera never captures the faces of the spouses, as if they are irrelevant figures in this story. More than 80% of the times, the camera is either on Chan or So, making them both seem larger than life.

Wong Kar Wai gets all that he wants and more from his actors who are custom-made for the roles. He makes the cigarette-smoking, rain-soaked Tony Leung look invincible, yet vulnerable, and elegant-to-the-toe, doe-eyed Maggie Cheung, tranquil yet torn from the tempest raging inside her.

WKW is known to make unconventional movies around love and relationships (remember ChungKing Express and 2046?), but this one is something else. One doesn’t really feel sad for the protagonist even though one curses them for not going with their hearts, yet it is easy to empathize with them. There is no closure, yet there are no open loops either.

There is something more within, and the director is challenging us to stick our hand in, and find it. (For instance, Chan’s finger lingering on So’s flawless skin a moment longer than necessary seems to be more intimate than a lifetime of lovemaking.) It seems like they have somehow moved on to a different plane of emotions, even though their actions suggest otherwise.

The cinematography is, as would be expected, out of this world. Geniuses like WKW make even perfection tangible. However, having said all that, I still prefer 2046 (room 2046 makes an appearance in this movie) to this, even though most call it their favorite movie from Wong-Kar-Wai. I guess there is only one way to find out!

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