In the mood for...

You know how I want to write? I want to write the way Wong Kar Wai makes movies. So far I've seen only two of his movies, but even if none of his other movies look like these two movies, that's O.K. These are enough. You might have seen them too? In the Mood for Love, and its quasi-sequel (as the reviewers called it), 2046.

I saw 2046 first. Last year. Sitting in my apartment, in the dark. It didn't all make sense, but no problem -- it was more about the mood than the content. All that mattered was that there were these extraordinary creatures moving, often slowly, across my screen. Or sometimes not even moving. No, they were often inclined to pause, to linger, to breathe as the camera breathed them in. They wanted each other, or they only thought they wanted each other when really they wanted something that the other couldn't provide, and all this wanting made me want to be with them. It made me want to join the cast, to be the shadow around the corner listening through the walls, to be the fly on the wall or perched atop the rim of a bowl of noodle soup.

I finally saw In the Mood for Love, the quasi-prequel, last night. It was a different movie, less surreal, slightly less unsettling, and yet just as powerfully emotional and heart-palpitatingly beautiful. Perhaps more so. Again, there were the gorgeous creatures, or at times just shots of their slippered feet or lissome arms or elbows peeking out of doors. There was sparse but strategic use of slow-mo. There were coincidences and missed opportunities too numerous to count. Fingers that brushed furtively against each other, and bodies that slid past each other in narrow, winding stairways. There was waiting in the rain. There was voyeuristic indulgence, peeks through keyholes and phone calls ripe for the eavesdropping. There were so many empty words spoken as the characters reached for things to say, anything as long as it wasn’t what they were actually feeling. There was much aching, and much longing, and again, I wanted to be there.

I can’t explain it, exactly. It’s just something about the filmmaker’s touch -- his ability to evoke intense flavor through a spectacular, otherworldly palette of colors, costumes and 60s mood lighting. In watching the film, you can sense it all, the moist steam dancing across a face, the pressure of skin on skin, the taste of sticky rice lingering on the tongue. The scenes are so vivid, and yet -- there’s something off. Time, in real life, doesn’t move this way. Or does it? Scenes are cut together, they run together, and as days go by, the only way the viewer can tell is that Maggie Cheung is wearing yet another phenomenal dress. But then, as Maggie or Tony Leung wait for the phone to ring, for a knock on the door, for a voice to answer, time slows to a crawl, and it’s pure agony. And maybe that’s the magic -- the earth moves as quickly or as slowly as our desires allow, and here Wong is, with his movies, to show us, and to let us all know that we’re not the only ones.