The New York Times described it as Brief Encounter remade by Kubrick & Scorsese, which is an apt, yet lacking, way to describe Kar Wai Wong's exquisite 2000 classic, In the Mood for Love.
The time & place is 1960's Hong Kong, the exceedingly decent people are Maggie Cheung & Tony Leung, married neighbours who form a quiet friendship & bond over a shared secret. Creating vivid characters from little dialogue, Cheung & Leung (Cannes Best Actor winner) perform wonders, and on the simplest premise, Kar Wai Wong constructs a heart-wrenching world of repressed emotions & saturated colours.
A gorgeous piece of audio-visual cinema, perfectly executed by a director marching to the beat of his own drum, blessed with characters you would care about if they were animated as stick men. It wafts over you like a dream, but the poetic whallop of its final reels will stay with you for weeks.
I remember Tarantino explaining how he goes trough all his music, to get inspired and finally find the songs for his films, "if you really hit it right, people will never be able to listen to a song again without remembering the part of the film", that's what happends to the music of In the Mood for Love, you will never listen to that music again, without seeing that dress, that woman, that men of the film. One of the best I've seen.
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