In the Mood for Love | |
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Traditional | 花樣年華 |
Directed by | Wong Kar-wai |
Produced by | Wong Kar-wai |
Written by | Wong Kar-wai |
Starring |
Maggie Cheung Tony Leung |
Music by |
Michael Galasso Shigeru Umebayashi |
Cinematography |
Christopher Doyle Mark Lee Ping Bin |
Edited by | William Chang |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures (US) |
Release date
|
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Running time
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98 minutes |
Country | Hong Kong |
Language |
Cantonese Shanghainese French |
Box office | $12,854,953 |
In the Mood for Love (Chinese: 花樣年華) is a 2000 Hong Kong film directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung. The film's original Chinese title, meaning "the age of blossoms" or "the flowery years" – Chinese metaphor for the fleeting time of youth, beauty and love – derives from a song of the same name by Zhou Xuan from a 1946 film. The English title derives from the song, "I'm in the Mood for Love". Wong had planned to name the film Secrets, until listening to the song late in post-production.
In the Mood for Love premiered on 20 May 2000, at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or and Leung was awarded Best Actor. It is frequently listed as one of the greatest films of the 2000s. The movie forms the second part of an informal trilogy: The first part was Days of Being Wild (released in 1990) and the last part was 2046 (released in 2004).
The story takes place in Hong Kong in 1962. Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung), a journalist, rents a room in an apartment of a building on the same day as Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung), a secretary from a shipping company. They become next-door neighbours. Each has a spouse who works and often leaves them alone on overtime shifts. Despite the presence of a friendly Shanghainese landlady, Mrs. Suen, and bustling, mahjong-playing neighbours, Chow and Su often find themselves alone in their rooms. Their lives continue to intersect in everyday situations: a recurring motif is the loneliness of eating alone. The film documents the leads' chance encounters, each making their individual trek to the street noodle stall.