In the Mood for Love
In the Mood for Love
In 1962 Hong Kong, neighbors Su Li-zhen (Mrs. Chan) and Chow Mo-wan (Mr. Chow) discover their spouses are having an affair. As they spend time together, they develop feelings for each other, but their relationship remains chaste and unspoken, reflecting societal constraints and their own moral compass.
CrossCutCritic reviewedMay 8, 2025
In the Mood for Love
To You, Who Chose Fidelity Over Touch—and Still Think About Her When It Rains
“Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys...”
— The Odyssey, opening line (trans. Robert Fagles)
You didn’t sleep with her.
But you never really left her either.
You kept your vow.
You shared no bed.
You became, in every visible way,
an honorable man.
And yet—
You still remember the warmth of her voice
echoing down the hallway you never dared enter.
This is your story.
Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love is not a film about adultery.
It is a film about the ache of not committing it.
About two people drawn into one another’s orbit—
not out of lust,
but out of recognition.
Their spouses are cheating.
Their hearts are drifting.
And yet they do not touch.
They rehearse conversations they’ll never have.
They walk past each other like ghosts.
They eat noodles in silence and try not to become what they already are.
It’s not the affair that undoes them.
It’s the refusal.
This is the cross of restraint—
of the love that lingers but never lands,
of the feeling that purifies even as it tears you apart.
If you’ve ever wanted someone so much you stepped away—
if you’ve ever endured your own hunger
rather than take what wasn’t yours—
then you already know this gospel.
It doesn’t reward.
It doesn’t resolve.
It leaves you whispering into a temple wall,
and walking away
without turning back.
---
II. The Grace of the Unspoken
They never say it.
They never name it.
They never let it bloom.
And yet it colors every frame.
Their love is not declared.
It is deferred.
Held in glances,
paused in hallways,
folded into bowls of shared noodles eaten beneath a fluorescent hum.
He says, “We won’t be like them.”
She nods.
And in that nod, the world closes its door.
This is not moralism.
This is mercy.
Because what is not spoken in this film becomes sacred.
Not because silence is pure—
but because some longings become holy only when they’re never possessed.
Wong Kar-wai shoots them in mirrors, through slats, behind glass.
Their love is always framed, always partial,
as if the film itself cannot bear to look at them directly.
And isn’t that what unconsummated love becomes?
A reflection.
A memory we can’t quite touch.
Something beautiful precisely because it remained unbroken.
They rehearse the confrontation—
“Why did your husband do this?”
“Why did your wife?”
But they never deliver the lines.
Instead, they walk side by side,
like two confessions never heard.
If you’ve ever borne the weight of something unspoken
because speaking it would have destroyed it—
you already know this grace.
It doesn’t feel clean.
It doesn’t feel resolved.
But it’s holy all the same.
Because not every fire is meant to burn.
---
III. The Temple and the Whisper
He carries the memory like a relic.
He travels to Angkor Wat.
He leans into the stone—ancient, pitted, unmoving.
And he whispers.
Not to be heard.
Not to be answered.
Just to place it somewhere sacred,
so it won’t rot inside him.
This is not nostalgia.
This is liturgy.
The temple does not reply.
The stones do not shift.
But the act itself becomes a kind of absolution—
a ritual of love that needed no witness,
only a wall strong enough to hold what he could no longer carry.
This is what becomes of restrained desire:
it spiritualizes.
It becomes prayer.
Not for reunion—
but for release.
And this is the most devastating grace of the film:
He loved her.
He never touched her.
And he sanctified the memory
not by possessing it,
but by giving it to a place that would not give it back.
The whisper is his benediction.
If you’ve ever loved someone and knew you couldn’t tell them—
if you’ve ever needed a wall more than a reply—
then you already know what this moment means.
It’s not closure.
It’s consecration.
Because sometimes the most faithful thing we can do
with unbearable love
is bury it in a holy place
and walk away.
---
IV. The Cross of Not Crossing the Line
They could have.
No one would have stopped them.
Their spouses had already shattered the vows.
The world had already dimmed the lights.
And yet they chose not to.
Not out of fear.
Not out of guilt.
But out of a love that refused to become ruin.
This is not a romantic ideal.
This is the cross—
a choice that wounds precisely because it’s rooted in honor.
We often think of love as risk, as pursuit, as fire.
But In the Mood for Love reminds us
that sometimes the greatest love
is the one that does not demand to be fulfilled.
There is a scene when they practice saying goodbye—
as if to prepare themselves for the loss they know is coming.
But even in rehearsal,
you can feel the tremor.
He watches her walk away.
She turns back once.
And then, like memory,
she is gone.
They lose each other.
But they do not betray themselves.
And in that choice,
they become holy.
If you’ve ever withheld your desire out of reverence,
if you’ve walked away from something beautiful
because you knew keeping it would cost someone else their soul—
then you know this cross.
It doesn’t look heroic.
It doesn’t feel like victory.
But it is the cruciform path
of the one who bears love
rather than takes it.
---
V. A Psalm for the One You Never Stopped Loving
You see her in a crowd sometimes.
Or you think you do.
A shadow crossing a window.
A perfume that arrives before the memory does.
She has moved on.
So have you.
But part of you is still sitting at that little table,
noodles growing cold,
waiting for her to arrive.
In the Mood for Love doesn’t end with heartbreak.
It ends with reverence.
Because this was not a love that failed.
It was a love that held its breath and waited to be buried properly.
She is gone.
He is gone.
But the space between them remains—
sacred, restrained, aching with all that was never said.
Wong Kar-wai does not offer resolution.
He offers echo.
And maybe that’s what real love becomes
when it’s endured but not consummated—
not a ghost,
but a psalm.
A long, low hum that follows you
through rain-soaked alleys and years you cannot remember.
If you’ve ever loved someone
and never stopped—
not even when it was right to—
this is your story.
It is not a tragedy.
It is a benediction.
A memory kept alive by restraint.
A gospel that says:
You were loved.
You were seen.
And even though you never touched,
something holy passed between you.
---
Postscript
Some loves are not meant to be fulfilled.
They are meant to make us faithful.
In the Mood for Love is not a story of missed opportunity.
It is a liturgy of longing,
where love becomes sacred
by never becoming possession.
The whisper into stone is not failure.
It is prayer.
And the God who hears such prayers
does not need them to be answered
to make them holy.
---
If This Film Spoke Softly to You, You Might Also Appreciate:
Late Spring – For love that surrenders before it's asked to.
Hiroshima Mon Amour – When memory becomes mercy, and forgetting becomes grace.
Past Lives – For the ache of alternate timelines and the soul you still carry.
Wings of Desire – When angels give up eternity for presence.
Brief Encounter – The sacredness of refusal in the face of undeniable love.
The Remains of the Day – For those who chose duty over desire—and remember.
Lust, Caution (coming soon) – For when desire is not restrained, but crucified.