At this moment Kar-wai carefully applies his favorite stroboscopic effect. It is almost imperceptible. We have no time to realize if the picture is really transformed or our eyes are blurred, or it is the optics of love that changes the world and attaches significance to every trifle. This world bears so much resemblance to the reality and at the same time is painfully far from it. His pictures seem to remind us of the very nature of cinema - an illusion that is more convincing than life itself.
Unhappy love is just a metaphor for our yearning for the screen Eden.
The Hong Kong experimentalist interprets unhappy love quite freely, though. It is only on the face of it that In the Mood for Love seems to be strikingly traditional. Using the established Hollywoodish style as a cover, Kar-wai carries out a revolution in our senses and sensibility. He's more radical in his sentimentality than the patent revolutionist Lars von Trier in his eccentricity. Trier models The Idiots and suggests us to admire them.