In the Mood for Love

1/4

Starring: Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung

Rated PG for Thematic Elements and Brief Language

"In the Mood for Love" is one of those movies where the valiant efforts of the cast and crew are lost under the weight of the director's ego.  The need to be "artistic" and "different" and "avant garde" is so overpowering that the characters are never defined by anything other than their appearance and the narrative is so choppy that it could almost be argued that watching the movie would be the same experience if the scenes were shuffled at random.

The story is simple: Mr. Chow (Leung) and Mrs. Chen (Cheung) have just rented apartments next door to each other.  What they eventually realize is that their unseen spouses are having an affair with each other, and through their pain, they fall in love themselves.  But, for the sake of propriety, they do not act on their feelings.

Well, it could be a good movie.  Romances, even the best ones, typically don't have a lot of plot.  They tend to get in the way of budding love between the characters.  And love stories are definitely not well served by directorial trickery and flashiness.  But tell that to Wong Kar-Wai, whose gimmicky approach ruins any chance of this subdued, tragic love story gaining any sort of traction.  Jump cuts, replaying scenes with different outcomes, and garish close-ups are just a few the "tricks" he throws at the audience.  Which is ironic, because any idiot could see that this movie needs atmosphere and character interaction to work.  Who cares about these people if we don't know who they are from one minute to the next?

Wong Kar-Wai commits two cardinal sins of filmmaking: there's no connective tissue between each scene and the characters never say anything of substance.  These flaws are catastrophic to a film's success and they are ever prevalent in this stinker.  True, there is something to be said for subtext and viewer intuition, particularly in a movie where much is obviously going on beneath the surface, but there has to be a firm foundation to support it.  How can a film gain any traction if the audience is having to reorient themselves every 30 seconds just to figure out who these people are and when this scene is taking place.  Much less if it's a dream sequence.  I hate it when filmmakers do this.  It almost never works, and is just an excuse for a filmmaker to show that he's an auteur.  This isn't the only time a pretentious hack has done this.  It's happened before and will happen again.  I wish independent filmmakers would look to the best storytellers for inspiration, not idiots who are convinced of their own greatness.

It's a pity then that its two stars, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, work so hard.  They're both appropriately glamorous and talented, and show an ease performing with each other (the two frequently work together in their native China).  But their attempts to play it straight and underscore the tentative bond between their characters is sabotaged by the director's ego.

Chinese cinema tends to favor very bold colors and striking visuals to tell their stories.  The list of examples is numerous: "Raise the Red Lantern," "Farewell My Concubine," "Curse of the Golden Flower" (incidentally, all starred Gong Li).  That's true here, and if there's one positive quality I can give this film, it's that it looks great.  The atmosphere is warm, the characters are gorgeous, and the atmosphere threatens to liquify the screen.  It's the perfect setting for an understated love story like this.  Or it would be if Wong Kar-Wai didn't sabotage it every chance he got.

Wong Kar-Wai is as big of a name in arthouse circles as his contemporary Zhang Yimou (who, while inconsistent, is at least not as insufferably arrogant in his filmmaking), and I am at a loss to understand why.  His pseudo-third-chapter in this saga, "2046," was even more incoherent and ego-boosting than this one.  It even added time travel and fiction versus reality into it.  And the only reason why "The Hand," his segment of the compilation film "Eros," worked is the simple fact that Gong Li is so good that she can make closing here eyes scorchingly erotic.

Comments

  1. BitcherOctober 18, 2020 at 11:35 PM

    you understand exceptionally little about Chinese cinema. Your comparison to other Chinese films are laughably poor. In addition to that, you fail to designate the difference between Hong Kong cinema and Chinese cinema from other regions

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Desert Flower

2/4 Starring: Liya Kebede, Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall, Juliet Stevenson Rated R for Some Violent Content, A Scene of Sexuality and Language The problem with "Desert Flower" is not that Waris Dirie's story isn't suited for the cinematic treatment or that the actress playing her isn't acceptable.  The problem is that director Sherry Hormann doesn't do a good job of telling it.  This is a poorly focused film that can't decide what it wants to be about or what it wants to say. As is the case with many a true story, the life of Waris Dirie is too amazing to be made up by a Hollywood screenwriter.  This woman fled an arranged marriage as a child, spent years as a servant to a Somali diplomat in England, survived on the streets, and was discovered by a fashion photographer while working as a janitor.  Then she became a supermodel and UN Ambassador in the fight against female genital mutilation. Waris experienced a lot in her life.  Telling it all in a...
Read more

The Road

3.5/4 Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron Rated R for Some Violence, Disturbing Images and Language "The Road" has to be the most downbeat, depressing and cynical movie I've ever seen.  That's not meant as a criticism, but a fact.  This is a tough movie to get through, but not a chore.  Those who venture in will find their time well spent, albeit not in a necessarily pleasant way.  Then again, if a movie is based off a novel by Cormac McCarthy, "pleasant" isn't a word one would hope to be used to describe it. The film takes place after the world has ended.  How it happened is not explained because it doesn't matter.  But any hope of the Earth recovering from what happened has long since gone.  A man (Mortensen) and his son (Smit-McPhee) are travelling together, trying to "get to the coast."  There are few people left, although considering what many are doing with the goal of survival, that's a good thing...
Read more

My Left Foot

 2/4 Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Brenda Fricker, Ray McAnally, Fiona Shaw, Alison Whelan Rated R (probably for Language and Brief Violence) "My Left Foot" feels like one of those movies designed to win Oscars and nothing else.  In fact, it did win two Oscars for the immortal Daniel Day-Lewis and Brenda Fricker, but apart from their strong work, there's not much else to remember about this movie.  It's well-acted, but all in all it's pretty dull. Christy Brown (Day-Lewis) is getting recognized for his work in order to raise money for the disabled.  Despite being a talented artist and writer, Christy is not the ideal candidate for the job.  He's an alcoholic jerk who makes no secret of his lust for women nor is he above using his disability to manipulate people into doing what he wants.  Interspersed with his attempts to seduce a woman tasked with looking after him while he awaits his entrance are vignettes from his childhood.  Most notably how his mothe...
Read more