yesterday afternoon, feeling sick, and too restless to attempt cicero, pope or jakobson, i watched hua yang nian hua again. i was putting my louis macneice back on the top shelf when i saw the vcd sitting right there, untouched for nearly two years. and i was in exactly the right mood for it. i am really, really, really enthralled by that movie, for its slow subtlety and mesmerising movement, for how sensual maggie cheung is, for the way you feel their anguish and love and yearning smouldering in your own heart, the way, afterwards, your memory of it is languid, slightly confused, lushly-coloured, shudderingly beautiful, and heartbreaking. it must have been an erotic experience to have seen it in the pressed darkness of a cinema, but i was here when it played in singapore, and by the time it came here - well, i don't think it ever came to charlottesville, in any case - by the time it came to the us i was back home again. but seeing it once at the cinema wouldn't have been enough. i've watched this three times now - at home - and i'm not sure the first time i watched it i was that touched, but the more time passes, the more i reflect on it, the more i want to go back to watch it somemore, and it just moves me more everytime. i am not altogether sure that americans, generally, can like this movie, at least, some of the reviews i've seen suggest that they do not. but i think comments like undeveloped characters are very misguided, and the subtitles are partly to blame, i think. they give the wrong impression at times, and when you're watching for subtlest hints, the word choice makes all the difference. and perhaps many (and there are so many) small movements and words that we instinctively understand i fear they may miss. but even with those disadvantages you could hardly not be moved by the sheer beauty of the movie, and to grieve for that deep love and quiet intimacy and restraint passion that can never find breathing room. people, you really should go and rent the movie, or at least watch the trailers (bottom left, after flash intro: bandes annonces) to get a feel of what the movie is like. (you will also hear the haunting yumeji's theme from the soundtrack) while you're at the site do take a look at the reel of photos in the gallery, because they are beautiful too (erm. if you're blur like me, always use the arrow on the right side. just keep clicking on it for the pictures to keep gliding. if you hit the other one, it starts over. the reel, not the frame, moves you see, and that's quite counter intuitive.) if that isn't enticing enough, another review might help, and also one from salon.com.

scenes that have made particular impressions on me #1: they are having dinner together for the first time. at first she looks at the menu, then she hands it to him and says, order for me. i want to know what your wife likes. he looks at her. all right. and you can order for me what you husband normally would. they cut their food without conversation. he adds a dollop of radish or mustard to her plate, she looks at him curiously, then dips her food in it, she doesn't like it, you can tell. but all she says is, your wife really likes this huh. (ok, sinophones, what she really said was "ni lao po zhen neng chi la") no more is said abt this, but after that she dips every forkful in the sauce. i like that personal and a little wrongheaded resolution there.

scenes that have made particular impressions on me #2: he tells her he's fallen in love with her, and thinks he should go away to singapore. and then he says, let's rehearse, wo xiang you xie xin li zhun bei. they and we know this isn't the real parting, but under the pretext of pretending they say to each other those things they have held repressed in them. when he walks away she begins to cry. he comes back and say, hey, we're only rehearsing, it's not real, silly, but she continues to weep openly while he holds her, himself falling into silence and pain. they know that the end is nigh, that whatever they have just enacted is exactly where they will end up. they are constantly "rehearsing" with each other in the movie, although how much of it is acting and how much an expression of their love? that's worth watching again a hundred times to figure out.

scene #3. he takes a hotel room to get away from the world. she calls him at work and finds he hasn't been in for 2 days. she goes to him at his hotel, you see only her lower body, the swing of her coat and skirt and her high heels tapping up the stairs, running. she almost changes her mind, and runs down, and then up again, collecting herself. billowing red curtains all along the hotel corridor, she walks languidly down it, her coat swaying.

#4 we hear his voice on the phone: if i have another boat ticket, will you leave with me? the darkening room, and finally a moment of complete darkness until the door opens again, and he goes out and shuts the door. she comes in later, she comes in too late. she sits in his room, beside his bed, and tears run down her face. she repeats his words: if you had another ticket, would you take me with you? just one other time, earlier in the movie, she had come into his room to talk, when the family he lodges with returns early, and in unthinking fluster, or perhaps too self-conscious of indiscretion they decide that she should conceal herself, and only leave when the family turns in. but the family plays mahjong in the living room till morning, and she is trapped in his room, unable to sneak out. she rests in his bed, lying on her side, fully clothed and on top of the covers, wrapping the ends of it back over her legs. he leans back in his armchair beside the bed and smokes. they never go to sleep. they never move from their places. they wait. two against the world. two years later, when she finds his new apartment, she will come into his room while he is at work, and lie down on his bed. the intensity of their passion, running counter to the way she is always alone in his bed makes my heart break: they have never lain in the same bed together.

#5: in a "rehearsal", he says to her seductively: i don't want to go home tonight, but she recoils, saying, my husband would never say that, i just know he wouldn't. at the end of their last meeting, coming home in a slow-swaying taxi, she leans her head on his shoulder, he closes his hand on hers. his face is downcast and slightly angry at the world, hers set in simple grief for themselves and the unknown future. she says, i don't want to go home tonight.

maggie cheung, by the way, is unbelievably beautiful. how anyone can make lowering and lifting her eyelid an act charged with such eroticism simply amazes me. and she will make cheongsams a fetish with anyone who watches it. (i counted, offhand, no less than 15 different ones.) cheongsams and maggie cheung deserve a separate journal entry on their own, later.

the chinese title is hua yang nian hua: i.e. the flower-like years (the title of a zhou xuan (my grandmother's favourite singer) song which, late in the movie, comes over the radio). for the english title, which was only decided on days before going to cannes, wong kar-wai chose "in the mood for love", based on the song, so i am putting the lyrics here too. the song never comes up in the movie, but the bryan ferry version was used for the american trailer.


I'm in the mood for love
Simply because you're near me
Funny, but when you're near me
I'm in the mood for love
Heaven is in your eyes
Bright as the stars we're under
Oh, is it any wonder
I'm in the mood for love?

Why stop to think of whether
This little dream might fade?
Let's put our hearts together
Now we are one, I'm not afraid
If there's a cloud above
If it should rain, we'll let it
But, for tonight, forget it
I'm in the mood for love


okay i just felt like adding one more review i know the previous three have given everyone a good idea and this one isn't particularly penetrating but i just like the details in it lah.