In the Mood for Yearning

Playing as part of Showroom’s Too Much: Melodrama on Film season, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love follows a listening party for Lorde’s ‘Melodrama’ as part of our ‘In the Mood for Yearning’ double-bill. Tickets sold separately.

Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighbouring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching musical soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping-bin, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past 25 years of cinema.

This screening will begin with an introduction by Isobel Harrop, Showroom’s Assistant Programmer for Young Audiences, who will explore the often meme'd concept of “yearning”, and how music and film act as an expression of this melodramatic emotion.

Director Wong Kar Wai
Year 2000
Duration 1h 38m
Language Cantonese with English subtitles
Cast Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu Wai