Interview with Wong Kar-wai

Interviewed by Tony Rayns, a great specialist in Asian cinema, at the release of "In the Mood for Love" for the English magazine "Sight and Sound," Wong Kar-wai reveals the secrets of his film. He discusses what he showed, what he cut, what is revealed, and what is hidden, while also mentioning a future film called "2046".

Q: Why did it take so long to edit the film into its final version?

A: The project had a very complicated evolution. It dates back to 1997 when we had the idea of making two films in a row, one before the handover of Hong Kong and the other after. The first was supposed to be "Summer in Beijing," starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, but we couldn't arrange with the China Film Bureau to shoot in Beijing. So we were forced to abandon that plan. However, the actors were still committed, and I didn't want to let the project die. Initially, I thought of continuing "Summer in Beijing" by setting it in a restaurant in Macau. This gave us the idea of making a film about food, with three main threads: one about a chef, one about a writer in the 1960s, and another about a delicatessen owner. At that time, Maggie was supposed to star in "Memoirs of a Geisha" by Steven Spielberg, so we thought we had very little time to make our film. We developed the story of the delicatessen owner, then shifted to the writer's story. Eventually, I realized the writer's story was the one I really wanted to make. Initially, we planned to set the story in 1962, but then it expanded to cover a decade from 1962 to 1972. However, after 14 months of filming, we realized it was impossible to make a film on such a scale. So we decided to end the story in 1966. It took me a long time to determine how to end the love story between the two main characters.

Q: Was the film about more than just a love story?

A: Ultimately, I think it’s about the end of an era. 1966 marks a decisive moment in Hong Kong's history. The Cultural Revolution on the mainland had significant repercussions, forcing Hong Kongers to intensely consider their future. Many Hong Kong residents were refugees from China who had experienced nearly 20 years of relative peace, rebuilt new lives, and suddenly began to think they might have to leave again. Thus, 1966 signifies the end of something and the beginning of something new.

Q: Why did you go to Cambodia for the epilogue?

A: This decision was partly accidental. We needed to create a visual contrast with the rest of the film, akin to composing chamber music; we needed a counterpoint, something natural and historical. Thanks to our production director's connections, the Cambodian authorities granted us permission to shoot within 48 hours. Filming occurred during the Cambodian New Year and was supposed to take only one day but extended to three days. When I discovered that De Gaulle had visited Cambodia that year, I wanted that to be part of the film too. De Gaulle's visit represents colonial history on the verge of disappearing.

Q: During editing, I noticed a scene with Maggie Cheung in the Angkor temple. Chow recognizes something in her face in a Japanese tour guide and later imagines a conversation with her. But this does not appear in the final cut. Why?

A: We only planned one day of shooting because we only had one scene to film, the one that is now in the movie. But Maggie didn't want to miss the opportunity to see Angkor; she even volunteered to accompany us as a still photographer. Since she was there, we thought we might as well do something with her. We might still find a use for this sequence. I'm considering putting some of the footage we didn't use on our website.

Q: Many secondary characters seem to maintain illicit sexual relationships, but the central couple repress their feelings for each other. You even cut the only scene where they sleep together, showing them holding hands in a taxi instead. Is there a link between this repression and the times?

A: I cut the sex scene at the last minute. I suddenly felt that I didn't want to see them make love. When I talked to William Chang [art director, editor, and Wong's closest collaborator] about it, he told me he felt the same but didn't say anything. The reason I kept working on this film for so long was because I was addicted to it, particularly to the ambiance it evokes. I wanted to capture this era, which was much more subtle than ours. From the beginning, I knew I didn't want to make a film about an affair. It would have been too boring and predictable, with only two possible endings: they leave together or return to their lives. What interested me was people's behavior and their relationships under the circumstances shown in the story, their way of keeping or sharing secrets.

Q: Why don't you ever show the wife and husband?

A: Mainly because the central characters were going to act out what they thought their spouses were doing or saying. We were going to see both relationships - the adulterous affair and the repressed friendship - in this single couple. This is a technique I learned from Julio Cortázar, who always used this kind of structure. It works like a circle, where the head and the snake's tail touch.

Q: Is this related to the motif of repetition and variation in the film?

A: Yes, you're trying to show the process of change. Daily life is a routine – the same hallway, the same staircase, the same office, even the same background music – but we see these two people change in relation to each other while everything else remains basically immutable.

Q: Previously, you touched on the 1960s in "Days of Being Wild," and you suggested in your director's notes that this film might answer the question "What could have happened in 'Days of Being Wild Part II'?". What is your vision of the relationship between the two films?

A: "Days of Being Wild" was a very personal reinvention of the 1960s for me. Here, we consciously tried to catch up on the news. I wanted to talk about daily life at that time, about marital relations, about everything. I even made a menu of dishes for different seasons during the filming period and found a Shanghainese lady to cook them so the actors could eat them during filming. I wanted the film to contain all the scenes that are so familiar to me. The viewers might not notice much, but emotionally it meant a lot to me. I will never do the second part that was initially intended because this story makes sense to me. But it's sort of the second part as I would do it now.

Q: In addition to your work on this film, you tried to advance the science fiction film "2046." How does it fit in?

A: Trying to work on both films in parallel was like being in love with two people simultaneously. We developed stories for "2046," each inspired by Western opera, and more or less filmed two of them. We went to Bangkok to film one, and every time I looked for new locations, I thought we should have filmed "In the Mood for Love" there. So I moved the production of "In the Mood for Love" to Bangkok until scheduling problems with the cast forced us to suspend work on "2046." We shot many additional scenes, and as we were filming them, I kept thinking, "Hey, this should be in '2046'!" I almost became schizophrenic with these two films. I ended up telling William that I was going to stop thinking of "In the Mood for Love" and "2046" as two separate films; now I see them as a single film. They are strongly linked. In this movie, you can find elements that relate to "2046," and there will be traces of "In the Mood for Love" in "2046" when it is completed. For example, the element of Chow's secret in "In the Mood for Love" actually comes from "2046."