Fa Yeung Nin Wa (In the Mood for Love) (2000)
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Reviews Counted: 112
Fresh: 99 | Rotten: 13
This understated romance, featuring good performances by its leads, is both visually beautiful and emotionally moving.
Average Rating: 7.6/10
Critic Reviews: 32
Fresh: 28 | Rotten: 4
This understated romance, featuring good performances by its leads, is both visually beautiful and emotionally moving.
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Average Rating: 4.4/5
User Ratings: 50,256
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Movie Info
For his first film since the 1997 Hong Kong handover, auteur filmmaker Wong Kar-wai directs this moody period drama about unrequited love that, like his earlier work, swoons with romantic melancholy. Set in a Shanghaiese enclave in Hong Kong in 1962, the film centers on two young couples who rent adjacent rooms in a cramped and crowded tenement. Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) works as a secretary in an export company while her husband's job at a Japanese multinational keeps him away on extended
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Cast
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Maggie Cheung
Su Li-zhen -
Lai Chin
Mister Ho -
Rebecca Pan
Mrs. Suen -
Siu Ping-lam
Ah-Ping -
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All Critics (112) | Top Critics (32) | Fresh (104) | Rotten (13) | DVD (29)
Director Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong's most romantic filmmaker, is known for his excesses, and in that sense the film's spareness represents a bold departure.
The film is gorgeous, dripping with texture and sensuality and, well, mood.
Every charged frame of the film pulses with the central contradiction between repression and emotional abandon; the formalism and sensuality are inextricable.
Top CriticWong Kar-wai tricks up the schmaltz with a lot of avant-garde filigree. He's that most suspect of hybrids: a pop-schlock aesthete.
Stylized, set-designed to the last hair wisp, the film is a mixture of bold devices with delicate understatement that leave a remarkable aftereffect.
I didn't much care for this very strange movie.
Ethereal, evanescent, evocative of true, ineffable experience, In the Mood for Love is amazing
As beautiful as it is to look at, In the Mood for Love is full of passing moments, missed opportunities, and plenty of darkness.
A smoldering love story unlike any other, Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love remains one of the very best films of the 2000s.
It's not what's present in the image that makes us desire to see this film again and again, but rather, the absence that haunts it.
The emotional richness of the piece undeniably pierces the heart.
The performances are quietly aching, never relying on explosions to push a point home.
Agençant parfaitement la simplicité de son récit à la complexité de sa mise en scène, Wong Kar Wai nous livre au final un chef-d'%u0153uvre incontestable en son genre.
Despite whatever kind of buzz this film has received, keep in mind that everyone has to judge for themselves whether Wong Kar-Wai's little experiments work for them.
When you're in the mood for subtitles and more art than action or plot, check out Wong Kar-wai's highly regarded In the Mood for Love
As this lovely film moves from allegro to adagio, it never loses its pervasive sense of loneliness.
It rivals the impact...Lost Highway [had for me], and is easily one of the best films I have ever seen.
Quizás, baby.
Audience Reviews for Fa Yeung Nin Wa (In the Mood for Love)
Super Reviewer
In a city where secrets are seldom kept for long, Chow (Tony Leung) & Su's (Maggie Cheung) fates become intertwined as it is learned that their spouses are having an affair. Through their mutual grief & longing to understand, they evolve from consolers into pursuers. However, fearing the public's opinion on such a taboo tryst-coupled with their own fears of what they will become-they do not allow themselves to fully give in to their desires. Wai's skillful eye helps to augment the arresting power behind the lover's concerns.
Being so obsessed with gossip & fearful of becoming the object of scandal, Wai's framing and intrusive camera-work gives the sense that as an audience we are just as culpable as the neighbors for making judgements about how these people run their private lives. Rarely, do we see these characters from inside their personal space. Most of the time there is a blurred door-frame in the forefront of the picture or a slightly dirty window-pane separating us from their intimate moments. This visual motif is highly effective as one cannot help but feeling like a voyeur, projecting our morality on to them & using their personal lives as entertainment. We are among the countless eyes scrutinizing their every move, confirming their worst fears. A theme made all the more intriguing by Michael Galasso's beautifully moody score. While this would seem like enough material for an already great film, Wai subtly adds another dimension to the story by not only having this couple be the victim of public perception, but also by showing the agency by which they are molding their own future.
Upon hearing the news of their spouse's infidelity, Chow & Su begin to act out scenarios in which they pretend to be each others betrothed. In their own way, attempting to understand how relationships of this nature develop. Bizarre enough as the situation already sounds, they seem to begin living vicariously through these mock sensual exchanges. Experiencing the same thrill that their partners must have felt. Only unwilling to consummate the relationship for fear of having to relinquish the moral high ground.
After all, Wai shrewdly hints throughout the picture that their situation isn't completely thrust upon them. Their eyes are wondering ever so slightly & they are even seen changing direction when the other is near. Also, Su is constantly adorned with the latest fashion. (49 different dresses throughout the film to be exact). Causing one of her neighbors to off-handedly remark to another, "She dresses like that to go out for noodles?" It is buried more than the other themes in the film, but one that adds a curious complexity to the whole situation.
This film is a rare gem in a genre that I thought I had written-off completely. One that is not only thought-provoking & gorgeous to look at, but suffused with something I find missing in most romance pictures: sincerity.
Super Reviewer
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- Mister Ho: I sometimes wonder what I'd be if I hadn't married. Have you ever thought of that?
- Su Li-zhen: Maybe happier. I didn't know married life would be so complicated. When your single, you are only responsible to yourself. Once you're married, doing well on your own is not enough.
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Latest News on Fa Yeung Nin Wa (In the Mood for Love)
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Foreign Titles
- In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wa) (DE)
- In The Mood For Love (UK)

