‘In The Mood For Love’ is a poignant, often oblique, romance-without-the-romance story, in which two married neighbours in early 1960s Hong Kong discover that their spouses are having an affair, and they embark on a friendship of their own which stops short of adultery but which has the frisson and intimacy that we would normally reserve for a sexually-based relationship. We observe Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-Zhen (Maggie Cheung) who meet up for assignations in restaurants and even hotel rooms, but while there is undoubtedly an element of duplication and deliberate mirroring of what the adulterous spouses are doing, there is also the important element of offering compassion and counsel to one another as they realize they have been cheated on by their marriage partners.

We hardly see their ‘other halves’ and the film is framed entirely through the lens of the victims, and the solidarity that comes together in their attempt to find depth and warmth outside of their marriages. It is quite a clever conceit because the expectation in a film like this would be to see the adulterous lovers front and centre. But director Wong Kar-Wai goes for a more left field approach, looking at the infidelity through the lens of the victims and the reverberations that it has on them and the moral stand that they appear to be making (they both seem to want to have an affair with each other but don’t want to be as dishonest as their spouses).

And this is what makes ‘In The Mood For Love’ so compelling, as it addresses the inadvertent but inevitable problem of what happens when one is ultimately let down by not only a spouse but by the very confidant who made the adultery bearable. For, Chow Mo-Wan and Su Li-Zhen’s friendship only endures when they are in physical proximity to one another. And when they eventually leave this neighbourhood, the pain of losing one another proves to be even more unbearable. Memory and mourning is the key to this film, and is exemplified by the intertitle that appears on screen at the end concerning how the end of an era really does mean the end of all the comforts and friendships that come with it.

The relationship of the protagonists is crucial, but it only operates in the present domain. When they are no longer able to be together, there is an elusive and ephemeral nature to what is left, and it is fitting that the film’s final scene consists of a visit to a ruined temple and of Chow whispering a secret into the walls of the ruins. The secret is now lost to time. When the building that housed their friendship has been raised to the ground, what is left?