In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-Wai

Those familiar with Indian romantic cinema will hardly find the emotions expressed in this film as novel and enchanting, but the formal dexterity of the director is something to marvel at.


Looking at two people from a voyeur's eyes, from behind doors and through windows, Wong Kar-Wai creates a mood of unearthly love from scenes of mundane, crowded spaces.

The interpretation that I have for this film is not that of social repression killing the expression of love, I think the film can be considered more transcendental than that.

I think the theme of the film is this: To preserve the purity of love means to shield it from the corruption of gossip and carnality. But this preservation also means a frustration to find intimacy. This quest of forever guarding one's desire for oneness to slip into a desire of physical union is a spiritual one, hence the final, absolutely breathtaking montage at Angkor-Wat.

The quest for transcendence, and to have something not of this earth, is what a temple signifies. And what better place to bury an uncorrupted secret than that!