In Professor Seng’s article, it explores how the different cinematic and synchronic visual storytelling techniques make In the Mood of Love a movie that not only revolves around the storyline of the protagonist, but it also infuses the unique spatial elements of the urban environment in of Hong Kong and documents different urban spaces such as restaurants, corridors, cinemas, clubs and red carpets, in which they will inevitably all disappear because as the film’s director Wong Kar-wai says, “I always wanted to put some places in my films, a corridor, a restaurant, or a street, because I knew it would be gone soon.” His concerns about how the city would be irrevocably changed have inspired him (in a way) to infuse these urban elements that we see everyday into the movie, as if it would be only left as a memory back in time.
Apart from the urban elements, the movie emphasises on the private urban spaces of Hong Kong. With reference to their article, the film is a spatial collage of bedrooms, mahjong rooms, hotel rooms and other domestic spaces embodied in the apartment building interior. The way how proximity between these spaces are portrayed in the film give the audience a sense of how private spaces feel public, as if all the spaces were interconnected tightly and how neighbours were also very connected socially. This spatial collage expresses a sense of interconnectedness within the local Hong Kong society in which rarely exists in the modern Hong Kong society.
Chung Lap Hang David 3036076653
Commendable effort summarizing the author’s intent and relating it to the selection of background settings. Do you feel this can only be achieved with interiors?