Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. 

At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past two decades of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career. 

It’s the best-looking movie with the best soundtrack and the best cinematography and the best actors with the best director…and it’s still more than the sum of its parts.