In the Mood for Love- Greg Weinstein

In the Mood for Love is a triumph for Wong Kar Wai not only its visual storytelling, but in using the audience and keeping us on our toes throughout the movie. He does this while utilizing a fairly simple storyline to set up the events as two sets of couples move in next door to each other and one of the husbands and one of the wives have an affair. Their respective spouses end up finding out, and are soon, seemingly, going to start an affair of their own, but it is one of the most perfect non-shots ever, as we are never actually shown whether or not they have sex with each other, and truly does the audience need to know? It is through Wong Kar Wai's storytelling that the sex at this point, is meaningless as they have basically done the ultimate act of love with their looks, walks, and actions with each other.

For instance, one of the greatest visceral images in the film is the red curtain, which is always swaying in the wind, an act of the heart just as the spouses may or may not be swaying themselves. Just like Pyramus and Thisbe, forbidden to meet except through a wall, as our two lovers are forbidden to act on their desires, even though their spouses have, yet the ecstasy and instensity, built up by the shooting appears to be too much for them. This is paralleled with the seclusion of the cheating spouses' faces and how the audience can never see them, perhaps an illusion to their shame and their secrecies. The same red curtain always swaying back and forth in the wind thus seems to allude to our character's loneliness throughout the film, right up until Chow speaks into the hollow tree and then muddles it up to stay there alone, never to be heard from by anyone else. This loneliness is also displayed in the beginning before Chow and So really meet, as they are both always eating alone, depressed thus leading to their inevitable hookup. This is the defining moment of the film, as the audience knows what should happen, we have seen it so many times in Hollywood movies, where the couple's passion finally erupts into the most sensual scene one can imagine, but this doesn't happen here. The audience never sees this and is thus, left alone at the end of the film without any conclusion or finality to our want of these two lovelorn characters to get together. It is this sympathy for the characters that Wong Kar Wai cleverly and expertly develops throughout the movie, always keeping us on the edge of our seats, just like good movies should.