Said Professor Seng, the film In The Mood For Love is a spatial collage of many different places and environments, especially domestic and public ones. The interconnected spaces created and shot in the film not only present a typical Hong Kong urban landscape in the 1960s but, most importantly, they visualize the character’s complex emotions and reflect the context of migration and diaspora of Hong Kong in the 1960s.
Regarding depicting characters’ emotions, the film utilizes some private and intimate spaces like bedrooms to amplify the emotional vulnerability and isolation of the characters, for instance, the compact quarters of the apartments somehow emphasize the character’s sense of confinement within the social norms and expectations, however, in contrast, the empty hallways and staircases stir a feeling of emptiness as the characters, living alone, try to achieve the unfulfilled desire.
Central to the narrative of the film is the theme of migration and diaspora, the spatial collage serves as a metaphor for the fragmented identities of the characters who are migrants or descendants of migrants. Through the shots of bedrooms, mahjong rooms, hotel rooms, and streets, Wong Kar-Wai captures the multifaceted experiences of the Chinese diaspora in British Hong Kong. Each space represents a different facet of the characters’ identities, shaped by their migration histories and cultural backgrounds. Another scene worth noting is Su’s trips to street vendors and cinemas showing her efforts to find a sense of belonging in a city that is marked by constant flux.
He Ziyi
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I appreciate your response to ‘Cuts through Hong Kong.’ Your text seems mostly to be a summary. To improve this, you can write about your experience of domestic and public spaces in Hong Kong and how ‘Cuts through Hong Kong’ helps you to understand those places. And how domestic and public spaces provide urban identity to Hong Kong. How about the questions of migration and diaspora? You can write about the situations of migration and diaspora in the 1960s, as well as now, in Hong Kong reflecting through Eunice’s text.