It matches the achingly beautiful imagery that is characteristic of the director's films with a fairly linear narrative and protagonists that most viewers will be able to identify with, as opposed to the hipsters and hit men who have populated other Wong films. In the Mood for Love also is as much an elegy and a Valentine to the Hong Kong of the past as it is a story of suffering people. Scenes often are photographed from a hip-level point of view, as if from the viewpoint of some unseen child or ghost. The film's final sequence takes place at the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, suggesting that the Hong Kong of Wong's memory is also nothing but a glorious, vanished ruin. In synopsis, In the Mood for Love doesn't sound like much.
Viewers see the two absent spouses only briefly, from behind.
Eventually, it becomes evident that the unseen husband and wife are spending much of their time with each other, in an affair. This brings Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow together as they try to understand what has happened. As they become closer, the viewer wonders how far they will take their relationship. Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow even begin to play-act, rehearsing confrontations with their spouses and imagining the meetings that led to the affair. Each shot becomes suffused with pain, longing, apprehension and beauty.