| 100 |
The New York Times
Probably the most breathtakingly gorgeous film of the year, dizzy with a nose-against-the-glass romantic spirit that has been missing from the cinema forever.
|
| 100 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
A feast for the eyes and succor for the soul.
|
| 100 |
New York Post
Rapturously elegant and deeply sexy in a deliciously restrained way. One of the most romantic movies I have ever seen, right up there with "Brief Encounter"and "Casablanca."
|
| 100 |
Wall Street Journal
Excites us with words not spoken, passions not played out. A mood story more than a love story, it's all about sustaining a state of exquisite melancholy in the face of desire.
|
| 100 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
There may be no more sensual director in the world today than Hong Kong's Wong Kar-Wai.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
The sexiest movie of the year.
|
| 90 |
Film.com
It's a masterpiece, a sublime tone poem that shows what cinema is capable of when it tries to do more than just tell a story.
|
| 90 |
Mr. Showbiz
Her (Cheung) gorgeously sad face and slow, lithe frame are the movie's hammer and chisel. One shot of her walking away from a rented room down a hallway is, all by itself, twice the movie of anything else currently in theaters.
|
| 90 |
Los Angeles Times
The result is a kind of ultimate romantic film, joining an almost Jamesian sadness and discipline to that extraordinary visual sensibility. It's not the kind of thing you see every day.
|
| 90 |
Village Voice
A wondrously perverse movie that not only evokes a lost moment in time but circles around an unrepresentable subject. Mood is the operative word. A love story far more cerebral than it is emotional.
|
| 90 |
LA Weekly
It is undeniable in its poignancy, an ecstatic vision of what might have been, though as much for its story as for the fact that the whole thing dissolves like a paper fan in rain, an evanescent masterwork.
|
| 90 |
Salon.com
Smolders with more reserved passion than "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."
|
| 90 |
Rolling Stone
The film is alive with delicacy and feeling...It's a beauty.
|
| 90 |
Time
This enthralling, enigmatic, romantic drama from Asia's most influential auteur (Chungking Express) is an essay in appetite and inhibition.
|
| 88 |
Baltimore Sun
All about mood, and not one bit about action - which explains why it's at once both the most passionate film of the year so far, and the most determinedly inert.
|
| 88 |
New York Daily News
A love story told from the point of impact, at the heart, and no conventional resolution could be more profound.
|
| 83 |
Entertainment Weekly
Although In the Mood for Love isn't in the mood for action, it dazzles with everything but.
|
| 80 |
TV Guide
It's extraordinarily sexy: The atmosphere is all cigarette smoke and Nat King Cole songs, silk suits and tight sheath dresses.
|
| 80 |
Dallas Observer
Wong weaves a spell that no other director could create.
|
| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
A stylistic tour de force, one that wordlessly emotes and wears its emotions on its literal silk sleeves.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Wong denies us the satisfaction of resolution, but in sharing his mastery of cinema, and his gift for conveying mood, desire and vivid emotions, he's more than generous.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Shimmers and glows. But it also stings a little -- like the lovely flame that dies and the smoke that, in yet another Cole song, gets in your eyes.
|
| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The most ingenious device in the story is the way Chow and Su play-act imaginary scenes between their cheating spouses.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
The story gains most of its dramatic impact from superbly understated acting and Christopher Doyle's atmospheric camera work.
|
| 63 |
Miami Herald
A dreamy, ravishing ode to romantic longing, and it is bound to frustrate people who like their movies to get to the point, or at the very least have one.
|
| 50 |
New York Magazine
In the Mood for Love has novelty value, I suppose, and plenty of pretty camera moves, but it's not really a movie you can warm to.
|
| 50 |
USA Today
A stylistically fastidious, exasperatingly affected package that will put most people in the mood for slumber.
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