In the Mood for Love by Kar-Wai Wong

            French impressionist cinema, also known as the first avant-garde or narrative avant-garde is a term to represent the association of French films and filmmakers during the 1920s. During the World War I, French film industry was attacked and caused the film studios or operating places were shirted to wartime uses. There was no proper growing of French film industry which led to the American films industry started to flood into the France film market as they needed to fill the vacant screens of theatres. Therefore, the Hollywood cinema dominated the market by the end of 1917. After the war, French filmmaking was still not fully recovered as the Hollywood cinema had big influences toward the French audiences. Some French filmmakers tried in recapture the French film market by imitation of Hollywood production methods and genres. Impressionist movement had affect the film industry by giving narration which considering in psychological depth, revealing the play of a character’s consciousness as the interest falls not on external physical behaviour, but on inner action of the character too. Therefore, I would to discuss about the characteristics of the French Impressionist film in the contemporary film with the film analysis of “In the Mood of Love” by Kar-Wai Wong. 

            Based on Bordwell and Thompson (2010) mentioned that films that are made within a particular period and nation share a significant traits of style and form. This can be explained with the French Impressionism’s films during the period. There is a significant characteristics can be identified as a French Impressionism’s film. Firstly, the emotion of a character is important in a French Impressionism film in order to lead the audiences to feel the same way. As art is a shape of expression which allows the artists’ perspective to communicate with audiences through their acting, performance and emotion express. So that audiences can understand the emotion and meaning behind the scene even without a word of dialogue. Emotions and feelings are not a form of art but it delivers a form of expression or suggestive manner to the audiences to experience more in the film. The type of film triggers the audiences to have an immediate connection in emotion to the character’s perspective. It is also centred on the play of the character’s consciousness to give narration through the character’s psychological state of mind. Besides, French impressionism’s film is more centred on the abstract visuals which allow filmmakers to emphasize on temporal form or graphic to portray some emotion or meaning behind the film without including a narrator. It creates personal space for the audiences to experience and understand the emotion behind the films. Furthermore, film form of French Impressionism also used rhythm editing based on the visual pace. The lengths of shots and attentive juxtaposition of the movements within the certain shots of film create a sense of rhythmic feel. This allows the film to present the flows of the story and enables the visuals to narrate themselves so that audiences can understand the convention of the scene and emotion. This rhythmic editing also helps in showing the mental states of the characters. 

            Next, we found a few French Impressionist traits in the film “In the Mood for Love” by Kar-Wai Wong. This film is starring by a man, Chow Mo-Wan, a newspaper editor who moves into a new building with his wife. At the same time, Su Li-Zhen, an attractive lady who work as a secretary and she move in to the building with her husband. As both of their spouses often outstation or overseas, Chow and Su spend most of their time together as friends. They have everything in common from their daily routine. Soon, they noticed their spouses are having an affair. They feel a similarity between themselves as they are in the same boat. They find comfort in their growing unusual friendship and soon they struggle their love with each other as they don’t want to be like their unfaithful mates. 

            From the film “In the Mood for Love”, a few French Impressionist characteristics can be found in the film where the slow motion scene of Chow and Su spend their daily routine in buying noodles at the noodles stall. It is a showing of repetitive scene, shot and music of the story to show the feeling of constantly repeating life in emphasizing their lonely marriage life. This is also a part where they started to build connection with each other as they found the senses of similarity between them. It is consider as French Impressionist as this convention does not directly tell us what the message about but it is an abstract visual where audiences can feel the character’s loneliness, emptiness and also the emotion between the Su and Chow. Next, during the part where Chow had conversation with Su and they discuss about the topic of “life before marriage”, then he backed to the office and smoke. The mise-en scene of the particular scene where shows Chow’s back with the heavy smoke above him and his eyes looks moody and not concentrated which show his frustration and struggle toward the unusual love on Su. It is portrayed the struggle emotion of his imagination about how is it like if he still single and he can be with Su together. This gives audiences more experiencing the character’s emotion rather than just telling through narration. The visual leads the audience’s emotion into the character’s perspective. Moreover, during the scene where Su and Chow leave the hotel room, the scene freeze and stop to indicate the character’s perspective of the things happened between them will ever become memories. It is an abstract way of showing the convention of the character’s mind instead of knowing directly. This is shows how the cinematography and editing play in portraying the French impressionism characteristic in the film. Throughout the whole film, the Chow and Su are actually rehearing how it is like when having affair with each other. But indirectly, they have created an unaccepted love between them and they struggle with it as they don’t want to be like theirs unfaithful partners. These leads the audiences to feel the struggles by showing the characters’ play on their consciousness. 

            In short, French Impressionist film is a very artistic form of film that allows the audiences to react with their emotion and feeling into the film. It should be applied frequently in the contemporary film to create an abstract play of film to give a new life of French Impressionist film. However, this is widely popularise due to the market does not has much interest in these kind of film. As the contemporary films nowadays are mostly depends on the market’s needs but not filmmaker’s intention.