In the Mood for Love is one of my personal favorite movies, and it has also achieved a high reputation at home and abroad.
In the Mood for Love is a feature film made by Wong Kar-wai in 2000, which won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival (if not for Crazy Hoof that year, at least it was also the Best Director). In the 2012 audio and visual voting, In the Mood for Love won 42 votes from film critics and 9 votes from directors, ranking 39th on the mixed list and first in Chinese. It can be said that In the Mood for Love is the most widely circulated and most acclaimed Chinese film in the world.
In the Mood for Love is the second part of Wong Kar-Wai's "Su Lizhen Trilogy".
In the Mood for Love tells an old story: Betrayed men and women develop feelings. But he added a new element: the hero and heroine used a "crime scene reenactment" approach to investigate extramarital affairs, which also made the film suspenseful. How did the affair start and how it developed, Zhou Muyun and Su Lizhen went through this process unknowingly. This sense of suspense has always whetted the audience's appetite: Will they end up in love? How will they deal with this love in the end? This sense of fate is like a black hole of love, constantly attracting us, and of course the protagonist, let us watch them move towards inextricable affection
Su Lizhen is still Su Lizhen in the True Story of Ah Fei. In fact, her life is constantly putting pressure on her and torturing her. Her boss cheated, but she needed her help to deceive his wife. I wonder if Su Lizhen suddenly thought that her husband treated her the same way; she met Zhou Muyun at the hotel to write a martial arts novel (they haven't happened here yet), I was also persuaded by my landlord to pay more attention; even the cheongsam I wore when I went out to buy noodles was said to be "going out to buy a bowl of noodles, but also to wear this beautifully". Her beauty and her freedom are all limited, and she is destined to be unable to be with her lover in the best Mood for Love.
I once read a comment about Su Lizhen's words "Young and unfortunate, restrained and painful", this sentence is so accurate that every time I see this sentence, I can't help crying.
Cheongsam is a major feature of this film. Maggie Cheung's graceful appearance after wearing the cheongsam must have been deeply imprinted in the hearts of everyone who has seen the Mood for Love. Many people say that it is the cheongsam that makes the Mood for Love, but I think it is the cheongsam that makes the cheongsam.
Are the twenty-three cheongsams in the film really beautiful? No, some of them are pretty tacky. But when they appear in the Mood for Love, they are not just cheongsams, they are Su Lizhen's "flowers", her beauty, and her cage. This mutual sublimation makes the cheongsam look extremely beautiful, which in turn makes the Mood for Love even more charming. Sometimes, the cheongsam in this film is still a narrative tool. For example, the cheongsam changes three times during the restaurant meal. On the surface, it is a meal, but in fact three or even many gatherings are compressed into one. This is also the way of editing "to give a lot of information in a short period of time".
The role of Zhou Muyun is also very interesting. Many people say that he deliberately made Su Lizhen fall in love with him out of revenge. But I don't think so. He had this idea at the beginning. It was him who asked Su Lizhen to come out, he was also the one who proposed role-playing, and he was also the one who rented the hotel. But in the end, he couldn't help but fall in love with Su Lizhen. He said many times: We will not be like them. This was for Su Lizhen, and it was also a reminder to himself. He didn't tell A Bing about this, which also proved from the side that he really didn't want to have a real emotional bond with Su Lizhen. In the end, he hid the secret in Angkor Wat, which is also proof that he felt that this relationship was not visible. But the act he wanted to forget failed, all memories were wet and sticky, and he would never forget Su Lizhen. Hiding secrets in Angkor Wat is a kind of farewell ceremony, and "In the Mood for Love" is a passing water that cannot be grasped.
The English name of In the Mood for Love is "in the mood of love". Wong Kar-wai makes the audience fall into an ambiguous mood. For example, in a scene at the hotel, almost all the furnishings are warm colors, while Su Lizhen's windbreaker is red. These colors pull the emotion to a fiery state.
Most of the environment in the film is narrow, the aisle of the apartment, the steps leading to the noodle shop, which compress our emotions and make us feel a sense of depression, and the last empty shot is the explosion and relaxation of emotions. Ephemeral and permanent, vast and narrow. The soundtrack of this film imitates "Floating Clouds", and it sounds many times, like delineating each love segment.
Repetition and symmetry are a major feature of the editing of this film. The pinnacle of repetition of this technique seems to me to be Jeanne Dierman. The repetition of In the Mood for Love does the same thing as Jeanne Dillman: it immerses the audience more. Symmetrical use makes In the Mood for Love a delicate work of art, a movie that can be watched countless times
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