In the Mood for Love

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Osmin B Breathtakingly beautiful. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 07/13/25 Full Review Michael Deservedly called a masterpiece. Read the New Yorker review from 2023 which says it all. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 07/06/25 Full Review T W Rapturous, beautiful, haunting, and heart breaking. I could watch this a thousand times Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 07/06/25 Full Review Spencer Nielsen My favorite movie. A film whose aesthetic qualities are so intoxicating, it is the purpose of the narrative. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/19/25 Full Review Alan W Indulge me and let me count the many ways I adore this film. Maggie Cheung in a series of breathtakingly gorgeous, perfectly tailored, floral Cheongsan. The claustrophobic setting of a 60s HK old-building corridors forcing our main characters to brush against each other as they pass from opposite directions. Lashings of brutally beautiful reds at the hotel where their clandestine meetings take place juxtaposing against the grey monotone concrete neighbourhood they live in. Wong Kar-Wai's deliberately withholding and opaque writing and eloquent and expressive directing combining cinematographers Christopher Doyle & Kwan Pun-Leung's sumptuous visual compositions with that haunting theme from Shigeru Umebayashi and Michael Galasso's score. Last but never least, those furtive looks and glances full of longings and non-verbalized passion from Cheung and Tony Leung, as the next-door neighbours who develop an uncontainable bond with each other as they discover the secret their respective spouses are hiding. As a director, Wong has never been better before or ever since. All his artistic temperament and shticks that can make his films impenetrable or alienating are perfectly deployed here to recount a lean and profoundly felt romance set in a 60s Hong Kong that's bathed in rose-tinted nostalgia. Watching this on a big screen a quarter of a century later, this remains up there, with the likes of Blade Runner, The Shawshank Redemption, Airplane! and La La Land, as a handful of films I'd consider cinematic perfection. Filed right next to Brief Encounter (which I only saw subsequently), there's nothing quite like a forbidden love left unacted upon to produce the greatest romantic film of my generation. Meanwhile, the 2001 short is a playful reunion that's slight but curious. Though I'm not ungrateful for it purporting to give us the happy ending we pine for. Or at least a version of it. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 07/22/25 Full Review Thomas C Beautifully shot and told. The ending is abrupt and didn’t match the slow deliberate pace of the rest of the film. The tightness of the living quarters in Hong Kong was brilliantly captured. Would have been better as a short film like a Novella. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 07/20/25 Full Review Read all reviews

In the Mood for Love

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