In the Mood for Love (2000)
Trivia
Jump to:
Spoilers (1)
Director Wong Kar-wai was shooting the ending and editing the film a little over a week before its debut at Cannes.
Filming was shifted from Beijing to Macau after Chinese authorities demanded to see the completed script. Director Wong Kar-wai never used scripts.
The original idea and inspiration for the film stemmed from a Japanese short story concerning two characters who often walk by each other in a stairwell, but do not converse. In that story the characters end up committing suicide.
Maggie Cheung wears a different cheongsam dress in each scene. There were 46 dresses in total, though not all made it to the final cut.
Director Wong Kar-wai found the English title for In the Mood for Love (2000) while listening to a song from a Bryan Ferry CD with a similar title, "I'm in the Mood for Love." It is a cover of a 1930s song with the same title, Kar-Wai Wong used the title and the song in an early Hong Kong trailer of the film, and it was also used in the U.S. trailer of the movie.
Maggie Cheung's hair and makeup took five hours each day to apply.
The film was ranked #2 in BBC's "100 Greatest Films of The 21st Century" list, and the highest ranking non-English film.
The number of the hotel room where Chow (Tony Leung) stays is 2046. Director Wong Kar-wai's next feature length film was 2046 (2004), which also starred Tony Leung.
Despite being the two primary antagonists of the piece, the characters of Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chow are never physically seen onscreen, Mrs. Chow only very briefly. Roy Cheung and Paulyn Sun, who played these respective characters, actually filmed scenes as their characters which were edited out of the final cut (these scenes are present on the DVD and Blu-ray as deleted scenes), and their presence only remains in the film as a voice cameo for Mr. Chan, and Mrs. Chow only has two short scenes and her face is never shown.
Though Alejandro G. Iñárritu and his wife saw this film at the Cannes festival in 2000, 20 years later he was till so moved by he describes how after viewing it they "walked in complete silence for almost 10 minutes. We suddenly stopped by the sea. Maria hugged me and started crying inconsolably on my shoulder. And I did the same on hers. 'In the Mood for Love' had left us speechless and deeply moved. It was that moment that reminded me why...I wanted to become filmmaker."
The original cut was 130 minutes long, before thirty-two minutes were edited out to achieve the ninety-nine minute theatrical cut.
This was the fifth collaboration between director Wong Kar-wai and cinematographer Christopher Doyle out of their seven collaborations.
In the Mood for Love (2000) is the highest ranked modern film on Sight and Sound's top 250 list. It held the spot of #25 in 2015.
The film was chosen by "Les Cahiers du cinéma" (France) as one of the ten best pictures of 2000 (#05).
Three Nat King Cole songs are heard in the soundtrack of this Chinese movie: - Aquellos Ojos Verdes, Te Quiero Dijiste, and Quizas, Quizas, Quizas. "Courtesy of Capitol Records"
The film is included among the "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die," edited by Steven Schneider.
In the Mood for Love (2000) is ranked the ninth non-English-speaking film in the critics' poll conducted by the BBC in 2018.
Spoilers
During filming, director Wong Kar-wai improvised often with the actors, crafting the story and mood of the film as he went along. Originally, In the Mood for Love (2000) was a much more obvious romance film, with the actors throwing witty dialogue at each other and engaging in several scenes of lovemaking. Eventually, the actors and director decided to tone the mood down to the more subtle version that was released in theaters.
