The perfect Valentine’s Day movie! Wong Kar-wai directs this moody period drama about unrequited love that, like his earlier work, swoons with romantic melancholy. Set in a Shanghaiese enclave in Hong Kong in 1962, the film centers on two young couples who rent adjacent rooms in a cramped and crowded tenement.

Wong Kar-Wai’s masterful work of romantic formalism, In the Mood for Love looks to the unassuming corners of Hong Kong – tiny food shops, narrow alleys, corridors of shared apartments, cramped office spaces – to frame richly detailed, brightly coloured mise-en-scènes in this story of intoxicating desire, loneliness, intimacy, and beauty. In the Mood for Love is Wong at the top of his craft, and the pinnacle of 90s Hong Kong cinema.

Rating

PG

Duration

98 MINS