CHANEL | PARIS-EDIMBOURG PRE-FALL 2013 CAMPAIGN
Tilda Swinton photographed by Karl Lagerfeld
CHANEL | PARIS-EDIMBOURG PRE-FALL 2013 CAMPAIGN
Tilda Swinton photographed by Karl Lagerfeld
Kinga Rajzak makes the perfect chameleon for Vogue China’s May 2013 feature editorial
In The Mood For Love / 花樣年華 (2000) dir. Wong Kar-wai
“I thought we wouldn’t be like them.”
I’ve always loved stories that leave so much unsaid. Sentimentality, I think, works best when it’s caught in the little details. A food container swinging against a thigh, a pair of slippers left on the floor — what does this mean? Which message do I pick to believe in?
Is it any surprise, then, that the most powerful scenes in this film are wordless? There’s something incredibly intimate about watching two people on screen express themselves through looks and gestures. I never imagined getting so invested in whether two characters touched hands. I never imagined feeling so sad, either, when they finally did.
I think the power of this film comes from its insistence that the audience links threads together; nothing is spelt out. I really love works that trust in the intelligence of it’s audience. One of the best lines:
“What are you getting at, actually?”
“I thought I was the only one who knew.”The ‘reveal’ is actually anything but. And yet, we know and they know — is there any point in the saying of it?
I love the camera work: shooting always from doorways and windows, around corners and behind furniture. It seems to create an awareness of the voyeuristic nature of our journey, and I can’t help but wonder if this nod to the viewer is a deliberate acknowledgement of the fourth wall. Especially, after that title card about peering at memories through a dusty window pane — after all, what are movies but a distorted retelling of other people’s lives?
In the end, I think my takeaway will be in the faceless spouses; in the conversations occurring off screen. There’s something about the insistence that we “won’t be like them”. The blurring between ‘rehearsals’ and the characters’ own personalities; between perceptions and actions. Are they so readily distinguishable? Aren’t we just as capable of being cruel? What makes us different from the people who hurt us?
“I was only curious to know how it started.”
“Now I know.”There’s a constant reminder that the past cannot be returned. Rain falling late at night, smoke rising to the ceiling, the steady ticking of the clock. But that knowledge is what makes love’s sacrifice even more poignant. It’s what makes moving on — an act of strength.
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(My one gripe — and it’s a technical issue, nothing really to do with Wong Kar-wai — is that the Criterion subtitles didn’t always match the dialogue. I don’t speak Cantonese, but the sounds were sometimes close enough to Mandarin for me to catch the inconsistencies. A recurring fear with foreign language films: that sudden gripping anxiety that you’re missing out.)
