The second coda [to the film] opens, startlingly, with a fragment of old French newsreel footage showing De Gaulle's state visit to the country. The visual contrast between the film's elegant images and the grungy duped look of the newsreel could hardly be any greater, and the sudden appearance of a real-world event in the film's circumscribed diegesis signals an ending of some sort to the feeling's the film has indulged.
— Tony Rayns: BFI Film Classics: In the Mood for Love (2015)
The experience is phenomenological, rooted in consciousness and quieted erotic yearning, as very little actually happens in the film beyond its repetition of familiar gestures, sensations, locations, and musical patterns—an intangible immersion into the nimbus of emotion.[…]
[Wong's approach involves] ensnaring his characters’ romantic appetites within symbolically cramped interiors, tight hallways, and narrow stairways—even outside, characters are trapped by the rain or framed behind bars in an alleyway, figuratively imprisoned—to reflect the internalization of desire. [Indeed,] Critic Tony Rayns compares the approach to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), a film that is set almost entirely on the faces of those involved.
[…]
Wong’s concentration on memory builds what French theorist Gilles Deleuze called “crystal-images” that evoke an imagined past through the actual present, until the two periods are indistinguishable, creating a vague impression of the “transcendental form of time.”
[…]
The Buddhist temple could stand as the love affair that never was, now in shambles; it’s also a symbol of historical permanence, whereas untold histories, transitions of power, and fleeting romances remain forgotten to time. After all, Wong has tied his romance on a historical frame, from Angkor Wat to room 2046, which references the fifty-year deadline—as promised by Deng Xiaoping before his death—on which Hong Kong would earn its sovereignty after it became a region of China in 1997.
— Brian Eggert (Deep Focus Review)
Before walking away, Mr. Chow plugs his secret with a fistful of earth, hardly enough to prevent it from escaping, but perhaps buying a little time.
— Eric Haynes (Reverse Shot)
Synopsis: In Hong Kong of 1962, Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow, a journalist, move into neighbouring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their respective spouses creates an intimate bond between them.