In the Mood for Love - Jen

This was a crazy good movie. You don't see the cheating spouses, only the two who are falling in love, and they kept doing those "rehearsal" scenes, which really blew me away. I mean, who the hell rehearses asking your husband if he has a mistress? Who acts out how your husband/wife began an affair? It was such an odd element to add, and yet it seemed so realistic too.

Anyway. I can't pick just one scene that I thought was really powerful, but I can pick two scenes. The first was when they were rehearsing how the woman would ask her husband about the affair, at first I thought she was actually talking to the husband. But when I knew it was the other guy, and when I saw her start to cry, and he had to reassure her "He won't admit it that easily" - for some reason that really got me. I felt so bad for her. It was even worse when they rehearsed leaving each other and she started crying again. It's like she was so torn between her husband (duty) and her friend (love). She couldn't decide...and her nondecision led to a decision, of course. Despite how the majority of the film was presented, time does not stand still. Things do not repeat themselves. You do not get second chances. She didn't go with him. I wish she had.

Something else that stood out to me was when they were sort of trapped in his room because everyone else was in the living room and they couldn't know that she was over there. The whole "friendship" aspect of that scene felt very, very real to me. The way that she helped him write those serials, the way they conversed so easily, and even how they didn't need to talk. That whole thing was very companionable. It was something I found easy to relate to.