Compared with the conventional narrative structure, "In the Mood for Love" did fresh trial of the narrative structure by using some tricks, coincidence, rehearsal, and music as motif.
First, there are so many coincidences in the overall movie. Strictly speaking, it doesn't make sense to the conventional narrative to intensify cause and effect.
In the beginning, coincidence starts from the house moving of two family, in relation with liaison, that is, they love cross another member of the family, not their own spouse. Besides, two people left in the family realized the liaison of their spouse of at the similar time and were shocked to the fact. And they meet in the same noodle restaurant for several times by chance and have opportunity to know each other. This makes them link a strong bond naturally. And then the love story related to them begins. Thus, coincidence takes very crucial role to narrate the melo story in the movie.
Second, movie shows unique character representation by doing rehearsal about the situation of imagination. After getting shocking the news, left two people guess how their spouses love each other and represent the situation by themselves.
These rehearsals go on until the climax. We can't guess the current feeling of them well because rehearsal punctuate like a mask so, they can hide their feeling through it whenever they want. When do they say to each other "I love you" directly? The power to wait for the answer about the question exists in the movie.
Third, music repeated in the important turning point. Apparently, this movie emphasizes the change of mood and music takes a essential role as motif.
Think of each scene. First meeting with members of same floor after moving, first personal meeting in front of the noodle restaurant, Second personal meeting in the restaurant after finding out each spouse's cheating. Even though the same music emerges every the scene, each effect suggests different feeling. As the movie nearly arrives at the end, the music implies irresistible love and pity about love not to come true between two people in comparison with fascinating sentiment in the beginning.
As mentioned above, this movie has extraordinary method in that it unfolds the dramatic story and conflict with some tricks, coincidence, rehearsal and music.
Although it was a little bit far from conventional narrative structure, it was so novel and unusual experience.
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Intaek --
I'm interested in your observations about coincidence and how it forwards the drama in an unconventional way. You invoke the term "melodrama" and it's appropriate, since coincidental events were a staple of that mode of storytelling. I think you can push your idea about coincidence further, though. For example, how do you think repeat coincidence effects our sense of the reality (or non-reality, or hyper-reality) of the storyworld? How do coincidental moments contextualize our sense of the main characters' experience in the story? These are questions that you could explore in a final paper if you wished.
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