It is a restless moment She has kept her head lowered, to give him a chance to come closer. But he could not, for lack of courage, she turns and walks away.
I don't know why this didn't click with me the first time, as far as romance and style go this is right up my alley. An excellent exercise in subtlety and restraint, Kar Wai Wong's poignant drama is about those who are hurt and left alone rather than those who hurt and leave. The people getting hurt are Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan, two neighbors in 1960s Hong Kong, abandoned by their spouses, who are presumably having an affair. The spouses are never shown on screen, as if to accentuate the sense of isolation and loneliness of the protagonists. Meanwhile, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan develop feelings of their own through mundane chance (or are they?) meetings in hallways and rainy streets. Trying to be better than their spouses, they hide their forbidden feelings from both themselves and those around them; as a visual representation, the two are often shot from strange, obscure angles, and in most of the scenes, you only see one of them (or neither) at the time, as if showing both their faces at once would be too intimate. Also, their little role plays, designed to practice how they would react if their partners actually admitted to cheating, subtly double as a metaphor for the façade they have to uphold for the rest of the world.
Emotions or (futile attempts of) a lack thereof are in the foreground, but you can't not mention how this is a stylistic feast as much as an emotional. Lone raindrops poetically dripping on wooden boards, walls soaking in deep red, and that stunning L'eclisse-esque ending, all set to the nearly cartoonishly sensual theme, provides the perfect setting for a story as much about hands touching each other as hands pulling away.
I don't know why this didn't click with me the first time, as far as romance and style go this is right up my alley. An excellent exercise in subtlety and restraint, Kar Wai Wong's poignant drama is about those who are hurt and left alone rather than those who hurt and leave. The people getting hurt are Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan, two neighbors in 1960s Hong Kong, abandoned by their spouses, who are presumably having an affair. The spouses are never shown on screen, as if to accentuate the sense of isolation and loneliness of the protagonists. Meanwhile, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan develop feelings of their own through mundane chance (or are they?) meetings in hallways and rainy streets. Trying to be better than their spouses, they hide their forbidden feelings from both themselves and those around them; as a visual representation, the two are often shot from strange, obscure angles, and in most of the scenes, you only see one of them (or neither) at the time, as if showing both their faces at once would be too intimate. Also, their little role plays, designed to practice how they would react if their partners actually admitted to cheating, subtly double as a metaphor for the façade they have to uphold for the rest of the world.
Emotions or (futile attempts of) a lack thereof are in the foreground, but you can't not mention how this is a stylistic feast as much as an emotional. Lone raindrops poetically dripping on wooden boards, walls soaking in deep red, and that stunning L'eclisse-esque ending, all set to the nearly cartoonishly sensual theme, provides the perfect setting for a story as much about hands touching each other as hands pulling away.