In the Mood for Love (2000)
Directed by Wong Kar Wai

To talk about Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is to talk about ephemera, about the mounting tension in your chest when you realize that you’re falling for someone. It’s a high with no substitute. 

(Like I do) I consider all films within the realm of my personal experiences, especially my love life, and the memories that still adorn my mind from time to time, where - on commutes, cycling the lakefront path in the bitter cold, or simply soaking in a bubble bath - I confront these memories within my brain. I used to actively resist this notion, but now have warmed up to it, welcoming these intrusive thoughts as part of a process of remembering. I remember taking edibles for the first time in Venice Beach  and having my partner put on In Rainbows to soothe my anxious spirit, only to get more freaked out, retreat to the bathroom and realize that I could feel each droplet of water from the showerhead hit my body in rapid succession. Or a Halloween as Morticia and Gomez at the Shedd Aquarium,  roaming the museum with other couples in costumes, and amused by wholesomeness of the escape. There were the pandemic walks. A dance pole in the living room. A birthday on a pontoon. Getting lost in the dark at Starved Rock National Park. Or a dip in a swimming pool within the mountains, in a verdant greenhouse, where leaving the water meant being overwhelmed by the cold. These memories, along with a litany of others from past relationships, have their wings in my memory museum. 

But those eras have passed. It took considerable time for me to uncross the wires in my brain, but I’ve found a new high with Aislinn that frankly feels unlike any of those past experiences put together. Where Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) may dance their way around each other, feeling that mounting tension in their chest, it ultimately doesn’t work out because of the origins of their feelings - they began their unrequited love affair as a means of understanding their spouses. It was Freud that suggested that all relationships are with four people, citing that each person is always thinking of someone else when in a relationship. Maybe that was true before, but now? As an act of will, rooted in intention and action, I know what love can be. And it’s  better than I imagined.