In the Mood for Love<\/em> than I’ve felt it in a long time. I can’t even say that I got everything out of the film, but I immediately knew that I will have a life-long relationship with this film. I will rewatch it often, allowing it to reveal new insights and truths to me over the years as I come to it at different points in my life. I will grow old with this film.<\/p>\n![\"in_the_mood_for_love_maggie_cheung_9_5a9d32f6c98d44a73cf3bdd4d631215a.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/in_the_mood_for_love_maggie_cheung_9_5a9d32f6c98d44a73cf3bdd4d631215a.jpg\")
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It’s difficult to explain exactly what about the film gives me that feeling, but it’s undeniable. The story – almost more of a premise or a situation, though that word gives the wrong impression – follows two couples who move into adjacent apartments at about the same time. The husband of one couple and the wife of the other both travel often for work, leaving their spouses home alone for days sometimes. Over time, those left behind begin spending time together. But what sounds like the beginnings of a sordid, adulterous love affair instead becomes an intensely moving but wholly chaste expression of a love that’s far deeper than physicality.<\/p>\n
The film is so subtle and languidly paced, and plays so much on mood rather than action that you may not even be sure at first what is going on, but the film sweeps you along with it anyway. The use of color and oblique camera angles is incredible – noticeable but never overpowering or self-aggrandizing, always playing into the overall mood of the film. It’s distant in the way it depicts the relationship, never pushing in on the characters or invoking any sentimentality or unearned emotion, but never cold or calculating. Instead, the very distance becomes part of the heartbreak.<\/p>\n
![\"In-the-Mood-for-Love2.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/In-the-Mood-for-Love2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[My list of favorite films released in 2010 will be going up on Row Three in mid-January, so I want to do something a bit different here. This series will include any films I saw for the first time this year and loved, regardless of release date. It may also include films from this year.] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[2054,2062,2063],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/In-the-Mood-for-Love-banner.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":33465,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/the-story-of-film-on-tcm-chapter-13\/","url_meta":{"origin":14039,"position":0},"title":"The Story of Film on TCM: Chapter 13","author":"Jandy","date":"December 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the story of the end of an era. For 100 years, movies had been shot on this - celluloid. Paper-thin, shiny, perforated. A medium so sensitive it could capture the subtle colors in snow. But in the '90s, the digital image and Terminator 2 came and reality got\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/SoF-The_Story_of_Film-90s.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":36221,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/challenge-week-33-videodrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":14039,"position":1},"title":"Challenge Week 33: Videodrome","author":"Jandy","date":"September 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I went into Videodrome with both anticipation and some amount of apprehension, as I have some Cronenberg films I love, but I'm also not really into body horror that much (though my favorite Cronenberg is eXistenZ, and it definitely delves into some of the same territory as Videodrome). And the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2016 Movie Challenge"","block_context":{"text":"2016 Movie Challenge","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/2016-movie-challenge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/tf-feat-videodrome.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1052,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/fb100-94-orpheus\/","url_meta":{"origin":14039,"position":2},"title":"FB100: #94 – Orpheus","author":"Jandy","date":"March 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This post is part of a project to watch the Film Bloggers' 100 Favorite Non-English Films. Orpheus France 1950; dir: Jean Cocteau starring: Jean Marais, Mar\u00eda Casares, Maria D\u00e9a, Fran\u00e7ois P\u00e9rier screened 3\/1\/08, Criterion DVD \"The death of a poet requires a sacrifice to make him immortal.\" Unrelated to Orpheus,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":23794,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/la-film-fest-day-five-tuesday\/","url_meta":{"origin":14039,"position":3},"title":"LA Film Fest: Day Five (Tuesday)","author":"Jandy","date":"June 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Initially I hadn't planned on trying to see anything that started in the 4:00 hour, figuring it'd be too tight to get there from work, but when I actually did the math, I realized I could get to work like half an hour early and that would leave me plenty\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/LAFF-Day-5.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":33174,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/the-story-of-film-on-tcm-chapter-4\/","url_meta":{"origin":14039,"position":4},"title":"The Story of Film on TCM: Chapter 4","author":"Jandy","date":"September 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a common understanding among silent film fans that something beautiful and inherently cinematic was lost when sound took over at the end of the 1920s. Silent film had reached great heights of visual splendor, highly complex ways of conveying story, psychology, and mood by visual means, and innovative ways\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/SoF-banner.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":40,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/06\/48-hour-film-festival-cont\/","url_meta":{"origin":14039,"position":5},"title":"48 Hour Film Festival, cont.","author":"Jandy","date":"June 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"That was another great theatre-going experience to mark down in my book. The Tivoli was PACKED OUT. I got there just before seven (when the show was supposed to start, but it didn't get started until 7:15), and there were people lined up outside, not able to get in because\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14039"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n