HIFF
Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung play neighbors
who console each other when they suspect
their spouses are having affairs.

Truth at heart
of love constrained

"In the Mood for Love"
Screens at 6:30 p.m. today

By Gary C.W. Chun
Star-Bulletin

If there was no "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" as a guaranteed winner in this year's Oscar race for best foreign language movie, "In the Mood for Love" would probably have instead taken the prize.

The title of this latest labor of love by Wong Kar-Wai, -- as well as a line early on in the film, "you notice things if you pay attention" -- tells it all. This is Wong at his most restrained; his fashionably hyperkinetic style is reined in a bit, but he doesn't sacrifice his palette of saturated hues and bold direction of actors. Veteran Hong Kong movie stars Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung play the romantic twosome, next-door neighbors who later suspect their spouses are having an affair with each other.

The claustrophobic feel of a growing early '60s Hong Kong (the main characters are part of a Shanghai immigrant wave) and the layered, constricted framing of Wong's film emphasize the close quarters the two must share. Once confident their spouses are cheating on them, they adamantly refuse to do the same -- but not without growing feelings of trust and affection. And when you hear a sentimental Cantonese love song or a crooning Nat King Cole singing some song of yearning in Spanish, it's not to build dramatic anticipation but instead to provide a bittersweet counterpoint.

And that's what may drive some in the audience to distraction. The director refuses to opt for the easy way out. There are no sudden, passionate clutches, no fevered kisses -- not even in private moments. They pass each other in their apartment building's hallway or in a noodle stall's stairway. These missed opportunities add a depth of poignancy to their constricted lives. The only times we are allowed to reflect on any hint of feeling between the two are when the film shifts down to slow motion and Michael Galasso's recurring, melancholic viola theme enters.

When the two finally share a restaurant meal, they eat and carefully speak as if their spouses' energies shared their table.

At times Wong allows his actors to improvise crucial scenes, playing out their encounters with small but telling variation: first a bit of flirtation, then reserve, the gentle touching of hands, the grasp of an arm or a tearful embrace. Far from being distracting, these moments show that while there may be different ways to play out a movie scene, the emotions must still resonate with truth.

Both Leung and Cheung are gorgeous to look at. Their well-groomed look, while appropriate to their characters' professional status (he's a journalist/writer, she's an office secretary), add an air of tenuous distance barely maintained between the two. Cheung is particularly striking--not only in figure, her body wrapped in an assortment of lively-patterned cheong-sam, but her face is expressive and emotionally powerful in a quiet way. Hers is a fully realized performance.

By film's end, an era has passed and the secret of a love unfulfilled is reduced to a mere whisper contained in the war-torn ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Wong Kar-Wai's graceful cinematic poem is one that should be savored.

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