“In The Mood For Love,” which ranks as the second greatest movie of the 21st century according to a BBC critics poll, stars Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung as characters who find out that their spouses are having an affair with each other. Leung, who won the Best Actor prize at Cannes in 2000, and Cheung give performances of resounding grace. Shattered by the betrayal of their spouses — never shown onscreen — our two lost lovebirds start to rehearse what they will say to their spouses and nearly break down in the process. Another particularly moving passage involves them play-acting and trying to reproduce the moment their significant others fell for each other. It’s an infectiously smoldering story of forbidden love. The spectacularly gifted Wong knows that nothing is sexier than erotic repression and he uses this theory to the nth degree in the film. It’s all backed by the sultry voice of Nat “King” Cole singing in Spanish, as heard on the soundtrack. The lyrics he sings, “Quizas, quizas, quizas,” making the song and film inevitably intertwined with each other. However, much like most of Wong’s well-known films, which include “Chungking Express” and “Happy Together,” the film is practically taken over by the incredible photography of DP extraordinaire Christopher Doyle. In a way, the critical success of Wong in the ‘90s and ‘00s was very much due in part to Doyle’s iconic cinematography. Is it any coincidence that Wong just hasn’t been the same artist ever since he and Doyle went their separate ways back in 2004? 2007’s misbegotten English-language debut “My Blueberry Nights” played like an uninspired greatest hits, and “The Grandmaster,” a kung-fu action epic starring Ziyi Zhang, featured astounding visuals but a convoluted and unmemorable story. Reviews of both were mixed at best and it didn’t help that even Doyle suggested at the time that the director was spinning his wheels and repeating himself. “You do realize that you have basically said what you needed to say, so why say more? I think you have to move on,” he told the Guardian a few years back. Contribute Hire me
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