Music
Title song
The title track "Hua Yang De Nian Hua" is a song by famous singer Zhou Xuan from the Solitary Island period. The 1946 song is a paean to a happy past and an oblique metaphor for the darkness of Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Wong also set the song to his 2000 short film, named Hua Yang De Nian Hua, after the track.
Soundtrack
- Shigeru Umebayashi: "Yumeji's Theme" (originally from the soundtrack of Seijun Suzuki's Yumeji)
- Michael Galasso: "Angkor Wat Theme", "ITMFL", "Casanova/Flute"
- Nat King Cole: "Aquellos Ojos Verdes", "Te Quiero Dijiste", "Quizás, Quizás, Quizás"
- Bryan Ferry: "I'm in the Mood for Love" (the inspiration for the English title, found on, e.g., the French two-CD soundtrack, not in the film)
- Zhou Xuan:《花樣的年華》 "Hua Yang De Nian Hua" (the inspiration for the original Chinese title)
- Rebecca Pan: "Bengawan Solo"
- All of the traditional pingtan, Cantonese, Beijing and Yue operas are historic recordings
Release
In the Mood for Love premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the . It was theatrically released in Hong Kong on 29 September 2000.
Restorations
In 2020, a 4K restoration from the original film negatives was performed by the Criterion Collection and L'Immagine Ritrovata under the supervision of Wong Kar-wai. The restoration was scheduled to premiere at the 73rd Cannes Film Festival in May 2020, followed by a limited theatrical re-release, but was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. A planned release in June 2020 at the Lincoln Center in New York was also rescheduled, with the restoration playing virtually in November 2020.
For its 25th anniversary, the film was re-released in theatres alongside In the Mood for Love 2001. It was released in theatres on 14 February 2025 (Valentine's Day) in China in regular and IMAX formats.
Digital and home media
The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray, most notably by Criterion, who released a restored high-definition digital transfer in the United States in 2012. Criterion again restored eight of Wong's films in 2020 in a process supervised by the director; controversially, the new versions changed the aspect ratio, colour grading and voiceover of some of the films, including In the Mood for Love. Wong explained his decision by saying, "I invite the audience to join me in starting afresh, as these are not the same films, and we are no longer the same audience." It was auctioned at Sotheby's, along with memorabilia from his other films. An archival footage featuring a montage of images from vintage Chinese movies is also featured in the DVD collection.
The total worldwide box office gross was US$17M. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100 based on 28 critic reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, calling it "a lush story of unrequited love". Elvis Mitchell, writing for The New York Times, referred to it as "probably the most breathtakingly gorgeous film of the year".
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that "in the hands of a hack, In the Mood for Love could have been a snickering sex farce. In the hands of Wong Kar-wai ... the film is alive with delicacy and feeling". Peter Walker of The Guardian, describing it as his "favourite film", wrote that it provides "profound and moving reflections on life's fundamentals. It's a film about, yes, love; but also betrayal, loss, missed opportunities, memory, the brutality of time's passage, loneliness—the list goes on". David Parkinson of Empire awarded the film five out of five stars, writing that "the performances are masterly, and the photography beautiful. It's a genuinely romantic romance and makes for sublime cinema".
Influence
In the Mood for Love has been called "era-defining ... [evoking] glamour with a streak of grittiness, and the feeling of being adrift," impacting popular culture broadly, including fashion and social media. A wide range of filmmakers have taken inspiration from the film, such as Sofia Coppola and Barry Jenkins, crediting it as a great film and a major influence on their own work.
Wong Kar-wai's aesthetic style has been referenced directly in films as well. The director duo Daniels paid homage to the style of In the Mood for Love in the film Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Lists
In 2000, Empire ranked it number 42 in its list titled "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema". It was ranked 95th on 100 Best Films from 1983 to 2008 by Entertainment Weekly. In November 2009, Time Out New York ranked the film as the fifth-best of the decade, calling it the "consummate unconsummated love story of the new millennium".
In the 2022 decennial critics' poll conducted by Sight and Sound, In the Mood for Love appeared at number 5, making it the highest-ranked film from the 2000s and one of only two from the 2000s to be listed in the top 10 of all time, along with David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. Wong's film was also the highest-ranked film by a Chinese filmmaker. The film owed its placement to the votes of 42 critics (out of 846) who placed it in their own individual top 10 lists.
In 2015, the Busan International Film Festival ranked the film number 3 in its Asian Cinema 100 list, behind Yasujirō Ozu's Tokyo Story and Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon.
In 2016, the film appeared in second place on BBC's list of 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century after Mulholland Drive. The film ranked 9th in BBC's 2018 list of The 100 greatest foreign language films voted by 209 film critics from 43 countries around the world.
In 2019, The Guardian ranked the film fifth in its Best Films of the 21st Century list. In 2021, the film was ranked at eighth on Time Out magazine's list of "The 100 Best Movies of All Time". In June 2025, the film ranked fourth on The New York Times list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century" and twelfth on its "Readers' Choice" edition of the list. In July 2025, it ranked second on Rolling Stones list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century."
In the Mood for Love 2001
Wong also shot a short film, In the Mood for Love 2001, which also stars Leung and Cheung. He screened the short at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Since then, it has rarely been shown. In 2025, the short was released in theatres to celebrate the 25th anniversary of In the Mood for Love.
In the short, Tony Leung's character runs a convenience store in 2001 Hong Kong, and Maggie Cheung's character is one of his regular customers. The customer is in love with a man, and leaves her keys with the store owner for the lover to pick up, but he never does. One day, the store owner gets a bloody nose when chasing down a thief. The customer pops in, also with a bloody nose, and announces that she got in a fight with her lover's mistress. Distressed, the customer gorges on cake before falling asleep in the store. The store owner ponders what to do. He kisses the sleeping customer, rationalising to himself that he is merely cleaning traces of cake from her face. To his surprise, she is not actually sleeping. She embraces him and begins kissing him back.
Wong's 2007 film My Blueberry Nights was partially inspired by the short film. Wong said that he wanted to make a film with Norah Jones and that he adapted the short to an American setting because Jones did not speak Chinese.
Accolades
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="width: 99%"
|+
|-
! scope="col"| Award
! scope="col"| Date of ceremony
! scope="col"| Category
! scope="col"| Recipient(s)
! scope="col"| Result
! scope="col" class="unsortable"|
|-
! scope="row" | Argentine Film Critics Association
| 2002
| Best Foreign Language Film
| In The Mood for Love
|
| align="center"|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan="2" | Asia-Pacific Film Festival
| rowspan="2" | 2000
| Best Cinematography
| Christopher Doyle, Lee Pin-bing
|
| rowspan="2" align="center"|
|-
| Best Editing
| William Chang
|
|-
! scope="row" | Australian Film Institute
| 2001
| Best Foreign Language Film
| rowspan="5" | In The Mood for Love
|
| align="center"|
|-
! scope="row" | British Academy Film Awards
| 2001
| Best Film Not in the English Language
|
| align="center"|
|-
! scope="row" | Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics
| 2001
| Grand Prix
|
| align="center"|
|-
! scope="row" | British Independent Film Awards
| 2001
| Best Foreign Language Film
|
| align="center"|
|-
! scope="row" | Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards
| 2002
| Best Foreign Language Film
|
| align="center"|
|-
! scope="row" rowspan="3" | Cannes Film Festival
| rowspan="3" | 2000
| Best Actor
| Tony Leung Chiu-wai
|
| align="center"|
|-
| Technical Grand Prize
| Christopher Doyle, Lee Ping-bing, William Chang
|
| align="center"|
|-
| Best Cinematography
| Christopher Doyle, Lee Pin-bing
|
|-
! scope="row" | Turkish Film Critics Association (SIYAD) Awards
| 2002
| Best Foreign Film
| In The Mood for Love
|
| align="center"|
|}
See also
- List of films set in Hong Kong
- List of submissions to the 73rd Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
- List of Hong Kong submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
References
External links
- "In the Mood for Love" Weibo official account.
- In the Mood for Love at Letterboxd
- In the Mood for Love: Haunted Heart – an essay by Steve Erickson at The Criterion Collection