Age of Bloom (2001)

Interesting facts

In the Mood for Love is a 2000 romantic drama film written, directed, and produced by Wong Kar-wai. An international co-production between Hong Kong and France, the film follows a man and a woman in 1962 who discover that their spouses are having an affair. As they spend time together, they gradually develop feelings for one another. It is the second installment in an informal trilogy, preceded by Days of Being Wild (1990) and followed by 2046 (2004).

Production

In the Mood for Love went through a long gestation period. In the 1990s, Wong Kar-wai found some commercial success, much critical acclaim, and wide influence on other filmmakers throughout Asia and the world with films such as Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, both set in present-day Hong Kong. His 1997 film Happy Together was also successful internationally, winning him Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival and surprising many.

By 1998, Wong had developed a concept for his next film Summer in Beijing. Although no script was finalised, he and cameraman Christopher Doyle had been to Tiananmen Square and other areas of the city to do a small amount of unauthorised shooting. Wong told journalists the film was to be a musical and a love story.

It transpired that there would be difficulties securing permission to shoot in Beijing with Wong's spontaneous methods of working and potential political sensitivities in setting his film in mid-20th century China. Wong had come to think of Summer in Beijing as a triptych of stories, much like his original concept of Chungking Express (in which the third story had been spun off into the film Fallen Angels).

Wong had set his breakthrough Days of Being Wild in that time in Hong Kong, when mainland-born Chinese and their memories, including those of Wong, then a young child, had a strong presence in the territory. Still saturated with the sounds of 1930's and 1940's Shanghai singing stars and the ideals they represented, the time also reminded him of the wide array of vibrant dance music floating in over the Pacific from the Philippines, Hawaii, Latin…

The cast of Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in A Story of Food (soon to become In the Mood for Love) provided an opportunity to pick up a loose thread of Days of Being Wild, as the actors had appeared in that film, although never together. Leung's few scenes had been left incomplete, awaiting Wong's planned sequel that was never made.

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