Caffeinated Clint
Colin Moore takes a look back at “Mood for Love”
Colin here. In Asia. Today I want to look back at a couple of films past.
“In the Mood for Love” (2000)
Hong Kong, 1962. Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) and Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) share more than the apartment building they’ve recently moved into. Their significant others are both oddly busy at the same time, what will turn out to be a different twist on spousal abuse. Chan knows all about it from another angle. As a secretary, her duties include booking travel plans, answering phones, and calling the boss’ wife to tell her that hubby will be late again, just not why. Chow meanwhile works as a journalist with dreams of writing a martial arts serial. For a writer he’s a man of fewer words in the flesh, but the company he keeps makes up for it. Ping is the annoying friend with enough bad habits for two or more, but turns warm-hearted when the time calls for it. He jokes that Chow would pursue Mrs. Chan if his wife wasn’t so beautiful. Chow won’t bite, even for humour’s sake. “I’m not like you,” he tells him. He trusts his wife and himself. Mrs. Chan though is a little more pragmatic. She knows how the world can bite back.
Over time, enough all too convenient business trips pass to give suspicion a little more spine. Over coffee, Chan and Chow do the simple math and realize they’re being duped. They point out the rather unimaginative evidence: her husband has a similar tie to Chow’s and his wife a similar handbag, each gifts from the other’s spouse. A new relationship begins. Seeing as that misery loves company they jump on the idea, just not on each other. It’s not an Adrian Lyne film. “In the Mood for Love,” is more a 90 minute exercise in foreplay that never quite pans out, but the enjoyment is being dragged through it. If there’s anything developing between the two flat-mates, it’s hidden away at first. They sit inches apart in restaurants and bedrooms, barely making contact or conversation, and say little enough to qualify their meetings as disaster dates. In time, they become closer. Chow invites her to help on the martial arts story, giving them an excuse to spend time together. It’s just as much an excuse not to feel guilty. When Chan says she doesn’t want to be like “them,” their spouses, she means it. An adulterer is a label she won’t wear, but as Chow puts it later, “feelings can creep up just like that.” By the end they finally understand.
“Feel the heat, keep the feeling burning, let the sensation explode,” was one of the film’s tag-lines. It’s a bit of an exaggeration. Director Wong Kar-wai (“Happy Together,” “2046”) supplies the passion well enough, but there’s not much exploding going on. There is heat though, and it comes through in other ways. Attractive bodies in dress suits and fitted dresses shift through alleys and perfectly lit hallways, while the camera pans across curves of any kind in no hurry at all. It makes an impression. The film is constantly praised for its mise en scene, its color, and its lighting. Rightly so. Technically, Kar-wai gives the impression that it all could be tasted. His love for melancholy can be just as easy to snicker at though. The more faux scenes show Chow and Chan passing in the night to a perfume ad soundtrack, or Chow propped up against a wall smoking in slo-mo. Thankfully, no one whispers, “Chow, by Calvin Klein.”
“Alexander” (1997)
For anyone old or Canadian enough to remember, “Rocket Robin Hood” was an animated series produced in Toronto during the same three year block as the original Star Trek (1966-1969). It fashioned the classic English folk hero into a space-age context. Sherwood Forest became Sherwood Forest Asteroid, and Nottingham changed to N.O.T.T. (National Outer-space Terrestrial Territories). Robin and Little John along with Will Scarlet and Friar Tuck battled a futurized Sheriff in duo-toned tights. The bows and arrows made the jump, as did the beard trimmers.
The idea’s been tried again since. “Alexander,” “Alexander Senki,” or “Reign: The Conqueror,” (USA) is a Japanese anime series based on the life of the ancient world military commander. In South Korea at least, the opening episodes exist as a 90 DVD film. The production enlists both Japanese and Korean talents, including “Aeon Flux”‘s Peter Chung, in transplanting the Macedon King to a fantastically imagined future (albeit using the historical dates, which may put it closer to a fantastically imagined alternate dimension).
It begins in Pella, the capital of Macedonia and birthplace of Alexander. As a younger man, Alexander is sandwiched between two camps, those who support his ascension to the throne and those who don’t. His father, Philip II, is an almost brute with a paranoid temperament and a layman’s vision of the world. He wants to rule and be noticed, period. His chief advisor Attalus manipulates him into casting off Queen Olympias, fathering a new heir by his daughter (niece by some historical accounts), and sidelining Alexander from his rightful place in the kingdom. Meanwhile, Olympias sits moaning in a harem of snakes, cackling longer than anyone really needs to. She’s more sorceress than Angelina Jolie’s character ever was, but just as wide-eyed and motivated to see her son rule. And with more caressing than your garden variety mom ever got into. Alex is the star though, a prince built like a runway model who seeks advice from Aristotle and wages war in a g-string (where Oliver Stone went wrong?). As an animated character he hardly shows an emotion or a fault, making him practically untouchable. When he comes across Roxanne at a pool in Babylon, he presses her to the ground to keep her quiet, then takes her robe for himself. Her response? “Such sweet smelling skin he has.” Sure. Cleitus, Philotus, Hephaestion, and Ptolemy, are his trusted friends, though none on them are given much time attention on their own. With them, Alexander has a few minor adventures that let us know who his inner circle is. Together they make some preliminary moves against the Persian empire and it’s self-proclaimed god-king Darius III. After Philip’s assassination he ascends the throne then goes on full attack.
The obvious differences from recorded history are in the setting and technology. Smooth skyscrapers and superhero color make even the desert scenes seem polished. Palaces are grander. Hair silkier. Villains are bad-ass pretzels, flipping and twisting themselves in Matrix attack mode. It’s no ancient Greece, though the story loosely follows your average history book. The exceptions are fun enough and are usually created as excuses for new action scenes, as in the taming of Alexander’s horse Bucephalus, which here is demon-eyed and monstrous. Likewise with “Rocket,” “Alexander” proves that men in tights can both succeed in combat and be all the manlier for it. This one is noticeably sexed up for adult anime audiences, with the odd flash or two, but doesn’t go overboard. The English dub does its job in adding the typical good guy/bad guy voice work. Alexander’s is mellow and confident, Hephaestion’s feminine, and King Philip’s like Jeremy Irons gargling raw meat. The enjoyment though is seeing how the tale is adapted, what’s altered and what’s not, all on top of well story-boarded anime. It’s slick enough for a night, with laughs that might not be intentional.
– COLIN MOORE
