Wong Kar-Wai
In The Mood For Love

The cinema of images and feelings belongs to the Chinese master Wong Kar Wai. His art is silent, devoid of rhetoric, sentimental in its simplicity. It touches, scrutinizes, and struggles without ever offending or politicizing. Descriptions of moments, fleeting glances, sensations, music. Everything always seems to be in the right place in Kar Wai's films, which are distinguished by that intimate and suffering touch that Eastern cinema has always boasted in comparison to Hollywood films.

The Chinese director made a name for himself with a series of "visceral" yet authentic films, among which his debut "As Tears Go By" and "Hong Kong Express" from 1994 stand out, heralding the future emergence of a cinema of feelings, music, and emotions, although its expression was not yet at the levels that would be reached later.

In his career, "In the Mood for Love" (2000) represents what many define as his masterpiece. The intricate plots of previous works give way to a greater underlying linearity: Chow (his "pet actor" Tony Leung) and Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung) are neighbors, both married. They will discover they are being cheated on by their respective partners, and a strong emotional bond will develop between them. The two start seeing each other and act as if they are both talking to their own wife or husband. The exchange of confidences will end up turning into love, but with the usual poetic and visionary class Wong Kar Wai never shows sex scenes, making everything understood through the looks and movements of the two.

This is, in its simple appearance, the Cinema of Wong Kar Wai. Linear, perhaps a tad manneristic in some passages, but fundamentally genuine and true, truly felt. Feelings are not expressed through words, but are hinted at through the slow movements that characterize the entire film. The looks, the music also send continuous messages that are not just small details, but real elements of a film that relies on these subtleties. Events that appear static, almost suspended in a lost time, bold colors, "alive", set against the darkness of a very present night.

A pastiche of modern and past where it is not the spectacle that triumphs but rather the realism of feelings. Impulses and passions are not shown, almost recalling a "neoclassicism" that merges with a powerful cinematography strongly illuminated by colors that help create a dreamlike atmosphere in which two actors move in a state of grace. In particular, one cannot help but be struck by the charm and elegance of the leading actress Maggie Cheung, perfect in every move. Wong Kar Wai builds with the strength of images and human references, giving a lesson in Cinema to many "great" or alleged filmmakers from across the pond.

"When I think back to those distant years, it's as if I look at them through a dusty glass. The past is something you can see but cannot touch, and everything you see is blurred, indistinct."