In the Mood for Love - Essay Example

“In the Mood for Love” by Wong Kar-wai The action of the movie takes place in Hong Kong in 1962. Chow Mo-wan, a journalist, and Su Li –zhen, a secretary at a shipping company, move on in two neighboring rooms in the same house. Both have spouses who are often late at work and stay in long business trips. Though they have a nice company of neighbors, Chow and Su often spend time alone in their rooms. Soon they make friends with each other on the basis of their loneliness.After noticing some suspicious details in their spouses’ life ad behavior, Chow and Su share their doubts about fidelity of their spouses.

Chow suggests Su to try to imagine and act in roles what occurs between their spouses and their lovers, and soon the border between a game and reality starts blurring. Su suggests Chow to help him with the book about martial arts. At the same time, as Chow and Su become closer trying to convince each other that they do not have to end like their spouses. Their relationships remain platonic.Nevertheless, the end of the movie is sad, Chow passes his days in trips across the Southeast Asia, but shortly before the end of the movie he comes back to Hong Kong, to the place where he met Su only to realize that everything had passed already and would never repeat.

After that he goes to Cambodia to stay there and to leave his secret love to Su there. This movie made a serious impression on me because it raises a number of important and complicated topics. The plot is built around the adultery of the main heroes` spouses but the director deliberately avoids judging others and tagging adultery as a sin. He tries to explore how love and affection appear between man and a woman and what sexual relationships bring to both of them.Having understood that their spouses cheat on him, Su and Chaw try avoiding their destiny and decide to stay “clean”.

They want their love to be honest, however it seems that they are just afraid of taking actions. In this purity Chaw and Su see their difference: their spouses are cheaters and lovers, while they have love. Though the topic of adultery is rather unpleasant the director makes all possible to show it as a background paying attention to the main scene full of delicate talks and symbols. The title of the film is very accurate: the movie shows how love evolves in people without turning into real love.

The main hero at some point falls in love with the heroine, and she falls in love with him, but they do not stay together. Perhaps, it will seem absurd but Kar-wai shows that this absurd is mundane in our life.Loneliness in crowd is the most terrible form of loneliness. A might-have-been love is the most terrible form of love. In Wong Kar-wai`s movie these two phenomena were merged together having made it tragic and romantic at the same time.