A miracle cure-all was discovered in Hollywood. This magical elixir is guaranteed to alleviate pressure, banish heartache, raise self-esteem and, if its creators could make it so, cure cancer while also giving whoever drinks of this cure-all a makeover. This elixir is sex. And while everyone in Hollywood seems to have it on screen, no one seems to note that its ready availability makes it cheap and a total cheat. If it’s so accessible, why value it so much? Take away the materiality on flagrant display in film, and space invaders wouldn’t consider us a higher species on first sight (or second sight, for that matter).
The renowned auteur Wong Kar-Wai’s 2000 romance In the Mood for Love is aptly named. Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (the incandescent Maggie Cheung) live in Hong Kong in the 1960s. Due to the crowded living conditions in the city, they live in single rooms in tenements. Their friendly, seemingly innocuous neighbours eat, sleep and have mah-jong marathons. Their spouses are always out of town at the exact same time, and they eventually discover through arbitrary clues that they are being cuckolded by the same two people.
Unlike baser animals in lesser films, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan do not fall into bed for a fitful bout of revenge sex. Instead, they attempt to understand how their spouses’ affair came into being. They playfully reenact (and mock) the imagined come-ons, which look very much like cheap pick-up lines and thereby make other romances look phony and pedestrian. They work late and dine out. He writes a wudan novel. She is a fan and helps him out. He helps her rehearse the moment when she confronts Mr. Chan about the affair. 