In the Mood for Love (2001)

What a waste of my time!!!

This is How Movies Should Be Made

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Greetings from Lithuania.Probably i'm going to be the only one here who didn't get this movie. I thought that it was boring and not involving. While acting was good, that is the only good thing i can say about "In the Mood for Love" (2000). While it isn't a bad film either, i expected it to be much more better character study movie, but it just didn't connected to me for a whole extremely slow paced 1 h and 34 min - i was bored out of my mind (and i know that "boring" is not the best word to describe a movie).Overall, for me personally "In the Mood for Love" is a big disappointment. While i wasn't expecting from it anything in a first place, it didn't involve me for a minute, and that is not a good thing when watching a movie to say the least.

This film might present the most unrequited pure romance in movie history. There's an ethereal quality to the picture, with close-up frames of the conflicted principal characters, and fluid slow motion sequences that add to the romantic nature of the story. For this viewer, the ambiance seemed to be French in a way, even though the story takes place in Hong Kong with an Oriental couple attempting to sort out their feelings after discovering their marriage partners are cheating on them with each other. I had to think about that, because the off screen relationship is insinuated quite strongly, but we never actually see the husband of Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung), or the wife of Mr. Chow (Tony Chiu-Wai Leung). They could have been carrying on separate affairs altogether.As odd as it sounds at first, the soundtrack with Nat King Cole singing in Spanish adds another layer of exotic mystery to the relationship between the chaste lovers. One may admire the way the couple resisted temptation to break their marriage vows, particularly in light of their own partners' indiscretions. To my mind, Mrs. Chan appeared to be the more resolute of the two, which makes it somewhat surprising that with the passage of years, she wound up living alone with a child, with one's instincts about the father left to the imagination. It's a rather ambitious film for director Kar-Wai Wong, who's unique filming style often involves characters having conversations off screen, adding yet another thoughtfully reflective layer to the story being told.

This is a snore-fest from start to finish. Anyone who claims this is good must be the kind of person that stares at a blank white painting and claims it inspires them. I gave it 3/10 because 1/10 and 2/10 is reserved for truly terrible movies, and at least the acting was good in this.

Set in Hong Kong, 1962, In the Mood for Love depicts a pair of quiet, introverted neighbors who discover that their spouses have been carrying on an extramarital affair. As a means of coping with this mutual heartbreak, they begin spending time together - bonding over martial arts serials and a mutual curiosity about their significant others' double lives - and are shocked to uncover the flicker of a budding romance themselves. Their sense of honor, propriety and, perhaps, a jolt of fear stands in the way, though, and the pair treads cautiously lest they commit the same sins that first brought them together. That central conundrum proves impossible, ultimately, and it's an issue the film never completely resolves despite toying with the subject for quite a while. Which, in a way, is the most relatably authentic path it could've chosen. Sometimes life is defined by what happens between those narrowly-missed connections, those epic romances that could've been but weren't. Actually reaching that conclusion is somewhat laborious, as director Wong Kar-Wai dallies about with only faint plot developments for most of the duration, but I didn't mind that so much. The marvelous cinematography, rich supporting cast and lush, detail-laden scenery provides interest where the story itself might otherwise fall short.