Review of In the Mood for Love (2000) by Sabra E — 20 Apr 2010

With so many people liking this film, I feel awkward saying that I didn't, but I didn't. Yet, I can't say it's a bad film. I've seen bad films before, and this film had enough redeeming qualities to keep it from being bad. I'd even say the film was made well; though, I wouldn't call it great or anything.

First: the couple's efforts to resist straying from their cheating spouses, seemed less like an exercise in self-control, or a "study of restraint" but more of a lesson in how fear can paralyze a person from satiating their instinctual desires--leading them into a drawn-out conclusion of misery, regret, unrequited love, etc.

Second: It's not hard to understand how the film could seem very romantic to some, who at one time or another--romanticized the stifling fear in a loveless situation, either rooted in obligation, or fear of the unfamiliar.

Aside from these tedious details, Maggie Cheung's acting was solid, but there was little (to no) chemistry between her and her love interest (played by Chiu Wai), no longing, no implied sexual chaos, nothing; and their personalities were so bland, that if either one of them had disappeared somewhere in the middle of the film, it couldn't've have made much difference; their ultra-variant marathons of detached and miserable constitutions didn't convince me that they were anyone, lest for the attitude of being unsatisfied with life in general.

Overall, my synopsis is: a man and a woman are neighbors and are bored; their spouses hate them because they're boring and hate sex, so they begin affairs; in the meantime, he two boring people find each other and become best friends, because no one else likes them, and they both hate sex, so they eat a lot of noodles and draw comics together: the end.

And I am a romantic cynic. I love--love. This is exactly why I didn't like Wong's film. For two protagonists supposedly "in the Mood" for it, (whether or not the situation was written as tedious, or tiring, or romantically exhausting in print) interpretations displayed illustrated otherwise--an overlapping disdain--more than a shared one, in an exposition (or execution) of two characters tormented by forbidden fruit.