In the Mood for Love A breathtaking spin on Brief Encounter set in Hong Kong in the early '60s, director Wong Kar-wai's ravishing In the Mood for Love knocked me out when I first saw it last year, and it's been growing steadily on me ever since. One of those rare, sublimely understated masterpieces that actually seems to become richer and more potent with each successive viewing, In the Mood for Love now strikes this reviewer as a shoo-in for one of the very best movies of the last decade.
The film follows two characters, Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chang (Maggie Cheung), who are obviously head over heels with each but powerless to act on their desire. As it happens, not only are the pair married to other people, it's soon discovered that their respective spouses are having an affair with each other. That we never actually see either of the adulterous lovers is just one of the rich ironies in a film that's as much about what doesn't happen as what does.
Wong Kar-wai (the brilliant director of Chungking Express, Ashes of Time and more) creates entire worlds out of the what goes unspoken: a glance, a momentary hesitation, a brief touch, an unexpected silence. And for all the film's poignant use of silence, its music — a heartbreakingly bittersweet score by Michael Galasso sprinkled with some tasty Nat King Cole recordings in Spanish — is equally crucial to the movie's pitch-perfect tone. In the Mood for Love may just be one of the most sensual films ever made (although there's not a split second of nudity or hanky panky), with Wong sculpting the colors, textures and spaces of his imagery and of his performances, distilling emotions into something abstract and yet profoundly personal.
In the Mood for Love is now available in a state-of-the-art 2-DVD edition from the Criterion Collection — good news to practically everybody except rabid film buffs like me who just had to own a copy of the film many months ago and plunked down big bucks for a rare and highly touted French import DVD (yes Virginia, film critics sometimes pay their own way too). For what it's worth, the Criterion Collection edition doesn't completely blow away that pricey French import, but it comes awfully close.
The transfer on the Criterion DVD is very similar to the French version — which is to say immaculate and absolutely gorgeous (truth be told, colors on the Criterion image are just a touch more stable and smoothly textured). Where Criterion really shines, though, is in the abundance of extras complementing the film, and the attention and apparent affection lavished upon every aspect of this digital production. Even the special features that the Criterion disc has in common with its French counterpart — such as the indispensable selection of deleted scenes with optional director's commentary — have benefited immeasurably from more accurate English subtitles.
The Criterion disc also includes an interactive essay on the film's music, a sweet but slight short film by Wong Kar-wai, 45 minutes of press conference interviews with the stars at the Toronto Film Festival, two extensive and quite enlightening interviews with the director, an essay on Hong Kong in the '60s, trailers, TV spots, photo galleries, and a fascinating 55-minute making-of that shows us how and why Wong's film started out as one sort of animal (a self-described naughty comedy about food) and ended something else entirely. Wong Kar-wai tends to trust his instincts more than a shooting script, and the supplemental features on In the Mood for Love are a wonderful illustration of that process in motion.
The whole thing is packaged in a handsomely designed case that includes a 48-page booklet containing, among other odds and ends, the entire short story that served as the primary influence on the film. In all, this is a stunning edition of a stunning film that, even in its darkest moments, manages to communicate the most profound sort of affection for its characters in every richly nuanced, visually sumptuous frame. 
This article appears in Mar 6-12, 2002.