#5 In the Mood for Love (Wong) at BAMPFA

This might be my favorite discovery of the project, so far. A friend and I saw this for the first time and both fell for it immediately. Neither of us knew anything about it going in, apparently unlike everyone else, since the show sold out a 232-seat theater at 4pm on a Friday.

Set in 1960s British Hong Kong, it follows two neighbors in a crowded apartment building who suspect their spouses are having an affair with each other. What grows between them is quiet, restrained, and heavy with feeling. Wong Kar-wai keeps the dialogue sparse, letting music, color, and close-ups --- hands, hips, glances, clocks, doorways, cigarette smoke --- do the talking.

It took a bit of research to realize how many films and shows I love trace back to this one, including A Everything Everywhere All at Once, Moonlight, and Mad Men. Sofia Coppola has spoken about In the Mood for Love (2001) as a key inspiration when writing Lost in Translation, most notably in her Oscar acceptance speech for Best Original Screenplay. Both films center on two people who have been abandoned by their spouses forming an intense, intimate bond shaped more by timing and circumstance than by action. Coppola echoes Wong Kar-wai’s trust in mood over plot: long silences, the repetitive melodies, and the quiet power of restraint.

But my favorite parallel is the way both films close with a whisper. In In the Mood for Love, it’s Mr. Chow traveling to Angkor Wat to whisper his confession into a wall, a secret meant for no one else. In Lost in Translation, it’s the moment when Bob leans in to whisper something in Charlotte’s ear as they say goodbye, words the audience will never hear.

Quizás, quizás, quizás.

In the Mood for Love on Letterboxd