In the Mood for Love
七月 09, 2017
What we will having in this blog post, will be discuss
about the French impressionism in the film. Here I am going to tell you, the French
Impressionism. It is popular in 1919 to 1928. It is based on a common goal of
exploration of the process of representation and signification in narrative
film discourse, which means explore the psychological causes and gives
narration considerable psychological depth. It is also revealing play of the
character’s consciousness, and concerns mental states, or dreams. Besides, it
manipulates on plot time and subjectivity, which mean always show the
flashbacks or memories of characters. Other than that, they have some specific visual
depiction of mental states via cinematography and editing. They use irises, superimpositions,
masks to indicate characters’ thoughts and feelings. The visual are distorted
and filtered. The vertiginous camera movement is to show dizzy or drunkenness.
The editing and rhythmic editing is based in point of view of characters, to
show character’s experience of particular situations. And lastly, the camera
movements are smooth, brought about by frame mobility.
In the mood for love, the story started in Hong Kong
in 1962. The 2 protagonists (Chow and Su) rent a room in an apartment on the
same day, become next-door neighbours. Their spouses works often and leave them
alone most of the time. When Su realises Chow’s wife has a bag like hers one –
when Chow realises Su’s husband has a tie like his one, they started suspicions
about their own spouses – they are having affair with each other’s spouses. So,
protagonists start to rehearsal how the affair started, imagine what will
happen next. Also, Chow invites Su to help him to write martial arts serial for
papers. When they always getting together for a long time, their love feeling
towards each other growing. However, they are finally separated.
First of all, the camera distance for French Impressionism
is close up – as symbol or subjective image. In the film, we can always see
that there are a lot close up scene, and it has no breathing space. It shows
the phobia of cheating. These 2 protagonists thought they will pull back before
it is too late – not do the same things like their husband and wife – having an
affair. But still, when they always get together, their feeling towards each others grew.
Secondly, the mise-en-scene.
There are 2 parts we can discuss – lighting and the arrangement and movement of
figures in spaces. For French Impressionism, the technique is using the shadows
indicating off-screen actions. But honestly, I don’t really found this in the
film. While they have another technique – single source, this can be found more
in the film.
Apart from that, there is a lot of mirrors and frame. The frame always show when only the 2 protagonists are together. It is giving the sense of they are meeting each other secretly. The facial expressions of them are also more relax and cheerful. While the frame show when there is only one character there, it kind of reflected the mind and mood of him or her. Normally, the facial expressions of them always are serious. Only when they get together, they will only forget about the cheating.
Instead of showing the story regularly, the production team shows flashback – to show the memory. A technique that does not let you really understand about the film and their real thought. The memories are also remembered bits and pieces. They say, this is the style of the director Wong.
Finally comes
to my conclusion – my afterthought. I will let some screenshots to express my
feeling.
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