Wednesday, September 23, 2009

In the Mood for Love--Ricky Leighton

The editing and the shooting structure of In the Mood for Love is different then typical three act structure. It helps to emphasize the mundane and repetitive aspects of the lovers failing marriages by reiterating specific monotonous actions. Specific scenes are seen more than once and occasional conversations will be shown only with greeting and departure.
The fact that the film focuses on the people being cheated on brings several distinct qualities to the picture. Since they are the ones that are being left for someone else, there must be something wrong with either them or the relationship from their point of view. The possibilities could range from being boring, uneventful spouses to a lackluster sex life.
Judging the work life of the male character, he has a tendency to work hard and really late. This would leave his wife at home or out to do things by herself. The male character is shown constantly smoking which tells the audience that his bad habit is also a bad routine. He smokes while working and traveling, to enhance this even further the film shows something as simple as lighting the cigarette but in other situations refrains from depicting conversations. Towards the end of the film, he decides to finally write the martial arts stories. Something he never had the creativity to do in his previous relationship. Therefore, he had lacked such exciting qualities.
The female character is repetitively shown retrieving rice and soup and returning back to her room to eat it by herself. She goes out nightly just to see a movie by herself. This tells the audience that perhaps her husband does not share the same interests and they might not have anything in common. We see her through out repeat these same motions except it progresses and is usually further in the future.
Over the course of the film, a majority of events are cut out of the narrative. Events that are usually considered essential to those circumstances such as conversations and sexual encounters. However, this films structure relies on the repetitive actions of characters, the mundane details in order to tell a compelling and unique love story.

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