In the Mood for Love (2000)

Wong Kar Wai’s masterpiece is a heartbreaking story of illicit love that pulses with the ache of repressed desire.

The signs were already there that Wong Kar Wai’s woozy, hungry, love story was likely to earn a significant promotion in this year’s poll. Ten years ago, it stood out as the best-performing film of the 21st century in the critics’ list, landing in 24th place. With a fresh generation of critics chiming in – one that cinematically came of age when Wong’s film had already attained modern-classic status – it was sure to rise up the ranks.

In the Mood for Love’s spectacular top five placement, however, demonstrates the broadly seductive allure of a mid-century Hong Kong period piece that looks both forward and back, wallowing in nostalgia for a purer, lusher form of cinematic romanticism while carving out more modern, even avant-garde forms of sensual and psychological expression from its saturated style. It’s a film that invites you to think, “They don’t make them like they used to” – even though you know they never quite made them quite like this. The film’s essential romantic narrative of forbidden yearnings and missed connections may be the stuff of vintage melodrama, but less familiar is the way Wong expands the simple anatomy of a thwarted love affair into an elastic meditation on personal unrest, political statelessness and the violence of time’s unrelenting passage.

The film never tells you it’s about any of that, of course. Wong’s porous, often headily non-verbal filmmaking trusts us to feel the lovers’ ennui and melancholy – and further, to identify it within ourselves – via its sheer accumulation of sounds, images and sense memories: be it the damp wraiths of steam swirling from an opened noodle container, the warm, vinyl-roughened croon of Nat King Cole on the soundtrack or the impossible lobby-card beauty of Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung, both preserved here in their ravishing prime, and somehow convincing as ordinary mortals made movie-star beautiful by love.

We’re living through a fairly stifled age of visual storytelling, as the televisual pull of streaming culture encourages filmmakers to think smaller and more literal. As moving as its relationship study is, anybody who thinks of In the Mood for Love, however, thinks first of those sensory flourishes and grace notes – it’s a film that even, somehow, has a signature scent. Its visual and sonic fragments cumulatively evoke not just a firmly past time and place but a mood, a feeling, a sorrow that drifts from the film’s world to ours. That must account for its enduring, even increasing, popularity: it lingers like an unrequited crush.

Guy Lodge

2000 Hong Kong, France
Directed by
Wong Kar Wai
Produced by
Wong Kar Wai
Written by
Wong Kar Wai
Featuring
Maggie Cheung Man-yuk, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Rebecca Pan Di-hua
Running time
98 minutes

Ranked in The Greatest Films of All Time poll

Sight and Sound

Who voted for In the Mood for Love

Critics

Mark Adams
UK
Nellie Alston
UK
Javier Angulo
Spain
José Arroyo
Spain/UK
Cameron Bailey
Canada
James Balmont
UK
Jennifer Lynde Barker
USA
Juan Barquin
USA
Annie Berke
USA
John Berra
UK
Manon Billaut
France
Alice Black
Ireland
Ivo Blom
Netherlands
Maja Bogojević
Montenegro
Nandana Bose
India
Clara Bradbury-Rance
UK
Nick Bradshaw
UK
Peter Bradshaw
UK
Rasmus Brendstrup
Denmark
Michael Brooke
UK
Sophie Brown
UK
Elisabet Cabeza
Spain
Anna Cale
UK
Monica Castillo
USA
Cecilia Cenciarelli
Italy
Karen Chan
Singapore
Teesha Cherian
India
Renata Clark
Czech Republic
Sam Clements
UK
Lillian Crawford
UK
Shane Danielsen
USA
Manishita Dass
UK/India
Sangeeta Datta
India/UK
Anne Demy-Geroe
Australia
Rahul Desai
India
Agnes Devictor
France
Rachael Disbury
UK
Diana Drumm
USA
Mirasol Enriquez
USA
Arman Fatić
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Leslie Felperin
UK
Ilaria Feole
Italy
Veronica Fitzpatrick
USA
Thomas Flew
UK
Guillermo Franco
Argentina
Rosalind Galt
UK
Anne Gjelsvik
Norway
Katie Goh
UK
Malini Guha
Canada
Lindsay Hallam
UK
Briony Hanson
UK
Fahmidul Haq
Bangladesh/USA
Brandon Harris
USA
Michael Hayden
UK
Jamie Healy
UK
Patrick Heidmann
Germany
Carlos F. Heredero
Spain
Andrew Heskins
UK
Sean Hogan
UK
Jonas Holmberg
Sweden
Peter Howell
Canada
José Antonio Hurtado Alvarez
Spain
Pamela Hutchinson
UK
Eric Hynes
USA
Bruce Isaacs
Australia
Stefan Ivančić
Serbia
Nick James
UK
Justin Johnson
UK
Namrata Joshi
India
Sten Kauber
Estonia
Cael Keegan
USA
Lisa Kerrigan
UK
Andreas Kilb
Germany
Mario Kozina
Croatia
Ivan Kozlenko
Ukraine
Amir Labaki
Brazil
Dorota Lech
Canada/Poland
Ann Lee
UK
Helena Lindblad
Sweden
Dario Llinares
UK
Guy Lodge
UK/South Africa
Eri Mahihara
Japan
Nadin Mai
France
Mela Marquez
Bolivia
Emily Maskell
UK
Lucrecia Matarozzo
Argentina
Neil McGlone
UK
Jamie McLeish
UK
Riina Mikkonen
Finland
Jacob Milligan
UK
Whitney Monaghan
Australia
Nathalie Morris
UK/USA
Iana Murray
UK/Philippines
Amitava Nag
India
Rielle Navitski
USA
Ben Nicholson
UK
Markus Nornes
USA
Helen O'Hara
UK
Tega Okiti
Nigeria/UK
Isabel Orellana Guarello
Chile
Lakshmi Padmanabhan
USA
Hynek Pallas
Sweden
Hannah Patterson
UK
Bina Paul Venugopal
India
Julie Pearce
UK
Justine Peres Smith
Canada
Sven Pötting
Germany
Baradwaj Rangan
India
Katie Rife
USA
Ronald Rovers
Netherlands
Catherine Russell
Canada
Mark Salisbury
UK
Cary Rajinder Sawhney
UK
Pini Schatz
Israel
Git Scheynius
Sweden
Youssef Shazli
Egypt
Kimberley Sheehan
UK
Katie Smith-Wong
UK
Damon Smith
UK
Fernanda Solórzano
Mexico
Mira Staleva
Bulgaria
Kyle Stevens
USA
Hannah Strong
UK
Brian Tallerico
USA
Matthew Taylor
UK
Lou Thomas
UK
Scott Tobias
USA
Janice Tong
Australia
Arianna Turci
Belgium
Kyle Turner
USA
J. M. Tyree
USA
Suncica Unevska
North Macedonia
Andreas Ungerböck
Austria
Nuria Vidal
Spain
Jendrik Walendy
Germany
Grant Watson
Australia
Elizabeth Weitzman
USA
David West
UK
Patricia White
USA
Madeline Whittle
USA
Janusz Wróblewski
Poland

Directors

Khadar Ayderus Ahmed
Finland/Somalia
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović
Colm Bairéad
Ireland
Ritesh Batra
India/US
Mahalia Belo
UK
Joseph Bull
UK
Anthony Chen
Singapore
Davy Chou
France/Cambodia
Sofia Coppola
USA
Geoff Dunbar
UK
Amanda Egbe
UK
Arie Esiri
Nigeria
Lee Haven Jones
UK
John Hay
UK
Sky Hopinka
USA
Ifa Isfansyah
Indonesia
Annemarie Jacir
Palestine
Barry Jenkins
USA
Asif Kapadia
UK
- Kogonada
USA
Marie Kreutzer
Austria
Bart Layton
UK
Nikhil Mahajan
India
Gabriel Mascaro
Brazil
Nana Mensah
USA/Ghana
Roberto Minervini
US/Italy
Călin Peter Netzer
Gary Oldman
Panah Panahi
Iran
Gitanjali Rao
India
Isabel SANDOVAL
USA
Ben Sharrock
UK
Maryam Touzani
Morocco