Summary:
The film begins with a poetic prelude:
It is a restless moment.
She has kept her head lowered...
to give him a chance to come closer.
But he could not, for lack of courage.
She turns and walks away.
Another title card follows, setting the scene in Hong Kong, 1962. We enter a bustling apartment. A young woman knocks on the door and is greeted by Mrs. Suen. The woman, just off of work, is looking for room and board for herself and her husband. When Mrs. Suen asks for her name, she says, "My husband's name is Chan." The scene cuts to Chan's wife leaving the apartment. Mrs. Suen tells her to call her when she's decided whether she wants to rent the room.
As she is leaving, a young man walks up the stairwell to Mrs. Suen's front door, scanning a newspaper. He inquires about the room for rent, and she tells him it has just been rented to the young woman leaving. This is the first time Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen (Mrs. Chan) set eyes on each other. Mrs. Suen asks Chow how many he's renting for, and he tells her that it's just him and his wife. She tells Chow that he should try her next door neighbor Mr. Koo; his son just got married, and his room is empty. Chow thanks her profusely, and she tells him he is too polite. He rings Mr. Koo's buzzer.
The scene immediately transitions into the tumult and noise of two moving crews shuffling furniture into the neighboring apartments. The crew keeps mistakenly loading Chow's furniture into Su's apartment and vice versa. Su sends Chow's wife's shoes next door. Mrs. Suen laments that Su is organizing the whole move of her and Chan on her own, without the help of Chan. Su insists that she can handle it. At one point, Chow spots a stack of books in his room that don't belong to him or his wife. He tells the mover to leave them, he'll take care of it. He brings the stack next door and asks Su if they are hers. She tells them they belong to her husband. Chow asks if her husband reads Japanese, and Su informs him that her husband's boss is Japanese. Chow asks how he should address her, and she tells him, "My husband's name is Chan." Chow introduces himself, and they part ways.
The Chows and Chans are now settled in. Su is on her way out the door when Mrs. Suen invites her to join them for dinner. Su tells her she has to be going, she's meeting her husband at the airport. He's been away for work. On her way down the stairs, Su passes a woman around her age. The woman, back to the camera, enters Suen's dining room, which is abuzz with conversation and the clatter of plates and utensils. Someone asks where Mrs. Chan is off to this late, and Mrs. Suen tells them she's meeting her husband at the airport. The frame centers on Chow, participating in conversation and enjoying a meal with his neighbors.
We cut to another day, in Su and Chan's bedroom. Chan is preparing for another long business trip abroad, and Su is asking him how long he'll be gone. "Two to four weeks," is his reply. Su reminds him to bring back two of the special Japanese handbags that they cannot get in Hong Kong. Chan, offscreen, asks for whom. She tells them they're for her boss, Mr. Ho. Chan asks why he needs two, and she says, "You know why." He asks whether he should get two different colors, and she says they can be the same color, throwing caution to the wind.
The next scene takes place in Su's office. She's answering the phone for her boss. It is his wife, Mrs. Ho. She tells her that Mr. Ho is still in a meeting. He asks if she's made the dinner reservations, which she has. She then tells him that Miss Yu called to say she's on her way. Mr. Ho leaves Su to finish up at the office while he goes and has dinner with his mistress, Miss Yu. He asks if he can bring her back anything from the restaurant. Su says she is fine, she'll get her own dinner, and thanks him. She wraps up at the office and goes home. Back at home, she retrieves her soup thermos from the kitchen. Mrs. Suen runs into her in the hallway and asks where she is going so late. Su tells her she's just going to get some noodles from the night market. Mrs. Suen asks her to stay for dinner; they're having pork soup. Su declines, saying she really isn't that hungry, she just wants some air. Mrs. Suen tells her she is too polite and watches her walk off.
Mr. Chow is on the phone with his wife. The scene starts with his wife, who appears to be in a library or office of some sort. Her face is not revealed to the camera. She's asking Chow to speak to Ming, his supervisor, about getting some time off. The perspective switches to Chow, in the copy room of the newspaper he works for. He's a journalist. He tells his wife he will speak to Ming and that he'll see her at home. Chow asks Ming to speak to personnel about getting him a few days off next month, and Ming says he will, but that the next lunch is on Chow. Ming tells Chow it's time to go, the workday is over, but Chow is intent on finishing his task before he leaves.
When Chow returns home, he finds the whole household marveling at a Japanese rice cooker. One of Mrs. Suen's friends tells him that Mr. Chan brought it back from a business trip. She suggests he get one, since his wife is so often late coming home from work. Chow says he wouldn't want to trouble Mr. Chan, but Su insists it would be no trouble at all. We cut to Chow at Mr. Chan's door, thanking him for the rice cooker and asking him how much he owes him. Mr. Chan, perpetually offscreen, tells Chow that his wife already paid him for it. Chow is surprised, and Chan acts surprised that she didn't tell him. Chow asks if Su is home, and Mr. Chan says she's not and asks why he needs to talk to her. Chow says one of his colleagues needs to travel to Singapore, and he was hoping Su could get him cheap tickets. Chan says he'll pass the message along. Chow apologizes for bothering him, and Chan says, "Don't mention it. We're neighbors!" (11:15)
The next scene, Chow is speaking to Ping, presumably the friend who is traveling to Singapore. He tells him he left his hat at Mrs. Chan's office, and Ping says he did it on purpose, so he had an excuse to return. Chow tells him that he's barking up the wrong tree, because Mrs. Chan is married. Ping says he knows, that's why he left. "Otherwise I'd move in next door," he jokes. "If your wife wasn't so attractive, she'd be a worried woman!" (11:50) Ping asks Chow to tell Su about the hat and that he'd come by and pick it up the next day, after which he'd take her out to lunch. Chow tells Ping to dream on, and says she'll bring the hat home and he'll give it to him the next day. Ping chides Chow for obstructing his unsolicited flirtations with Su.
Su stops by Mr. Koo's place to pick up her newspaper. Chow answers the door. Koo is not in, but he looks for Su's paper. She's specifically looking for the martial arts serials. Chow tells her that he has always enjoyed them too, and he even considered writing one himself. She asks him why he hasn't, and he says he isn't cut out for it. He offers to let her borrow his collection of martial arts novels. She says not now, but another time, thanks him, and leaves. The scene instantly cuts to Su walking back down the hallway with a stack of books to return to Chow, denoting the passage of time in which she takes him up on his offer to borrow the collection. Mrs. Koo answers the door and says Chow isn't home. He's been gone for a few days after having a fight with his wife, according to Mrs. Koo. She takes the books and tells Su she'll give them to him when he returns.
A scene then shows Mrs. Chow at her office, on the phone with someone. She's telling the person on the phone that she's leaving now, and there's no need to pick her up. Chow shows up at the office asking after her; he had planned to take her to dinner. Her boss tells him she already left and is flummoxed as to how she wouldn't have already told him that. Chow laughs it off, saying she always forgets to tell him. He says she's probably already home by now and leaves. The next scene shows him standing moodily in the alleyway, staring straight ahead. The musical motif begins again over a shot of Su walking to the market, soup thermos at her waist. She joylessly waits for the street vendor to fill her thermos with soup and walks back up the alley. Chow, newspaper under his arm, passes down the same alley to the night market, alone. He eats dinner there by himself.
Analysis
The film's prelude prepares its audience to expect a muted, shy romance to unfold, one with many near-misses and encounters whose drama exists solely in subtext. The film focuses on Su and Chow, and this focus is sharpened by the fact that Wong makes a point never to show their spouses' faces. Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chow always have their backs to the frame, or are turned away, or carry on entire conversations behind a wall, behind a closed door. Their faces are never shown. In the Mood for Love is a domestic romance. The film begins with both parties inquiring about the same room for rent and consequently becoming next-door neighbors. Since they are renting rooms in apartments occupied by families, they are both being thrust into well-established, closely-knit domestic communities. This existing community serves as an audience for the drama of their lives as it unfolds. Mrs. Suen, the landlady, is the primary voice of this collective audience; she is the one who lets the room to the Chans, and she is also the one who directs Chow to Mr. Koo, essentially initiating the plot of the film by ensuring that the Chans and Chows are next-door neighbors.
The moving scene contains heavy foreshadowing; movers keep accidentally moving the Chows' furniture into the Chans' room and vice-versa. Both couples are moving into empty rooms, and the contents of these moving boxes symbolize their respective lives together. Considering that Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan's spouses end up having an affair, the moving crews' confusion is a poignant symbolic gesture of domestic confusion and scrambling. Where do the Chans end and the Chows begin? When Mrs. Chow and Mr. Chan begin their secret affair, the boundary blurs, unbeknownst to Chow and Su. The fact that it is Chow and Su overseeing the process of moving, correcting the movers' mistakes, and organizing the logistics of the move without the help of their spouses emphasizes their roles as martyrs and victims in the dynamics of the affair. This moral distinction becomes an important one as the plot progresses; that they are the "cheated-on" and not the "cheaters" becomes a way they distinguish themselves.
The film pays considerable attention to the manners of Su and Chow. Both Su and Chow spend a large part of their day alone. Their schedules do not align with the schedules of their respective spouses, so even when they're not working, they're often alone. Though they put on affable faces for the benefit of their neighbors and colleagues, Kar-wai depicts both Chow and Su when they aren't subject to the gaze of their acquaintances, and in these moments, their demeanors are unfailingly dour. As the first part of the film progresses, Chow comes to the realization that his wife must be hiding something from him. We learn from Mrs. Koo that the Chows had a fight that drove Mr. Chow out of the house for days. We don't see this fight, but we do see Chow try to pick his wife up from work to take her to dinner, only to arrive at her office and be told that she already left. Su, on the other hand, is quite used to her husband spending weeks at a time away from home. Her loneliness is habitual, and she's grown not to expect anything else.
Both Chow and Su are subject to the judgmental gaze of others. Mrs. Suen, the most persistent interloper, frequently chides them both for being "too polite," to the point where it becomes a sort of mantra that begins to define them both in their separate situations. Their exceeding politeness, their good manners, are what prevent either of them from confronting their spouse and making an issue of their loneliness, their respective spouse's lack of consideration, or, in Mr. Chow's case, his suspicion that his wife is hiding something from him. The impressions of their friends, neighbors, and colleagues serve, in a way, as a stand-in for the film's audience; their input prompts us, as viewers, to question what we're seeing. When Chow tries to pick his wife up at work and she's already left, her boss is surprised that she didn't call Chow to tell him. His surprise makes us, as viewers, suspicious of him. Mrs. Suen's persistent invitations, always trying to get Su to join her and her family for dinner instead of eating alone, emphasize Su's introversion. A neighbor encourages Chow to get a rice cooker, citing that his wife is so often late home from work, and he could use it to make dinner for himself. When Chow goes to thank Chan for getting the rice cooker from Japan and tries to pay him for it, Chan tells him that his wife already paid him. Chow is surprised. Chan is also surprised that his wife hadn't already told him. All of these incidents contribute to the idea that there are breakdowns in communication and contact in the respective relationships. In the last encounter mentioned, there is the additional suggestion that there's been contact between Mrs. Chow and Mr. Chan.
Before Chow leaves Chan's doorway, he asks if Su is home; he's hoping she can help a colleague of his get cheap tickets to Singapore. Chan says he'll pass the message along, thus obstructing Chow and Su from communicating, even though he is clearly directly engaging with Chow's wife. Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chow are driving duel wedges in each other's marriages, and this process is succinctly visually forecast in a scene around the five-minute mark of the film. A recurring musical motif, a waltz, plays throughout the film in quiet sequences without dialogue that symbolize the progression of the respective marital breakdowns and, later, the progression of Su and Chow's relationship. In the first of these sequences, the camera tracks Su, who loosens a cigarette from the pack and walks into the dining room. Mr. Chan, seated, back facing the frame, is playing cards with Mrs. Suen and her friends. Su takes a seat behind him, looking over his shoulder. Another woman, the same woman who Su has passed before, around her age, and understood to be Mr. Chow's wife, enters the room and passes between Su and her husband. Su stands to let her pass, moving back from her husband. As the woman passes, she places a hand on Su's shoulder and another hand subtly on the back of Chan's chair. While Su is still standing, Mr. Chow leaves the room, passing between Su and her husband. Though the scene depicts nothing more than characters entering and leaving a room, a rather banal occurrence, the music and the tempo of their movement signifies a greater significance—their positioning in relation to one another, the scene's meticulous blocking, is a visual representation of how they will all come between one another in the end.
