by Steffan Horne

Created on: February 20, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

In the Mood for Love' (Wong Kar Wai, 2000): Analysis of a Short Sequence.

Upon first watching In the Mood for Love, I was struck by its use of repetition as a narrative agent. What initially seemed to me an irritating reiteration of roughly the same idea (according to Adrian Martin, "Michael Galasso's haunting string theme appearseight times in In the Mood for Love", through closer inspection revealed itself to be part of a rhythmic visual poetry inherent to the film. This is reinforced somewhat by the director's comments in an interview included as an extra on the film's DVD release. In the interview, Wong identifies his "showing changes through the unchanged," as a key element of the film's narrative structure. I have selected for scrutiny a sequence that demonstrates such repetition, as well as rich, highly expressive mise-en-scene that hints at the film's wider exploration of solitude and abandonment.

The sequence I have chosen to examine begins around 11 minutes into the film, when Li-Zhen goes to Mr.Koo's room to borrow his newspaper. The first shot is of Li-Zhen in the corridor of her apartment block, walking into shot from left to right. Li-Zhen stands out from the drab, dark brown dcor of the corridor walls as a single, brightly and exquisitely dressed figure. She rings the bell and waits for someone to answer. Though we do not see him, Chow appears at the door and informs her that Mr. Koo is out. Their conversation continues with Chow out of shot to the right, and Li-Zhen facing him. Chow offers to fetch the said paper, and leaves Li-Zhen alone in the doorway to do so. As she waits and looks around at her surroundings, Li-Zhen moves her right hand up to the doorbell once more, and her fingers begin to dance lightly across its metal surface. This may be done purely in boredom, but since it is the only activity in the frame over the long seconds it takes for her gain enough courage to enter the flat (and for reasons associated with repetition which I will go into shortly), it could also be read as a sign of Li-Zhen's increased sense of her own sexuality.

The shot changes as she enters, and we see her in the reflection of a mirror somewhere within the apartment. This uncertainty of location and point of view is also some thing that crops up time and again in In the Mood for Love (e.g. the gaps in audience knowledge caused by frequent time lapses). The mirror is noticeably rusty, and split in two, which obscures and fractures our view of both she and Chow,

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