The highest ranked film since 2000 on Sight and Sound's critics poll (it placed 24th), Wong Kar-wai's sumptuous In the Mood For Love is perhaps already widely considered to be a truly classic movie in every sense of the word. In the Mood for Love explores unrequited love in a similar vein to David Lean's old classic Brief Encounter, but here the stuffy conservative values of post-war Britain are switched for Shanghai in the 1960s, a place where equally conservative values - and gossiping neighbours - play a damning role in the potentially flowering passion between two people who discover their spouses are cheating with one another. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung - both disarmingly photogenic presences - play their roles with understated grace, while Christopher Doyle's camerawork is notably more elegant than the fast-paced energy found in his previous films such as Chungking Express and Fallen Angels.
