Theme and Social Issue in the Film "In the Mood for Love"

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Film Review
Unfulfilled sensual desire and loneliness are the hallmarks of Wong Kar-Wai's film "In the Mood for Love." Wong Kar-Wai manages to explicitly present a setting that allows for the establishment of the two themes and their development. Wong's success in achieving this is perhaps best explained by what Brunette describes as mysterization of daily life. Conventionally, many directors heavily rely on dialogue, drama, and narrations to emphasize more on mood over emotions. Wong's film manages to transcend this convention through visuals and sounds to establish sensual desire and loneliness moods throughout the film's diegesis. On the aspect of sound, Wong persistently uses non-diegetic sounds in various scenes to point to the sensual and lonely moods experienced by the characters. For instance, repetitive non-diegetic sounds are applied when the main protagonists, Chow and Su, cross each other's paths in their residence halls and the street before the platonic relationship between the two. This cinematic effect is amplified by the slow-motion visuals, which are also consistently utilized in the film. For example, when Mrs. Su is heading to the noodle cart with her light blue food flask, both the slow-motion visual and non-diegetic sounds are applied to mysterize the scene and allude to the sensual tension between the two characters.
The social issue of adultery is brought into focus in the film. The film's entire plot revolves around the victims of adultery, Chow and Su, who discover that their partners are engaged in infidelity. In his analysis of Wong Kar-Wai's works, Brunette agrees with Curtis K. Tsui's description of Wong's methods as oriented more towards "style as substance" as opposed to the typical cases of style over substance. This description alludes to Wong's mastery in utilizing c...