American Beauty

Lester Burnham (Spacey) is a 42-year-old writer who despises his superiors and feels his job has few prospects for advancement. His wife, Carolyn (Bening), is an ambitious real-estate broker; their 16-year-old daughter, Jane (Birch), abhors her parents, has low self-esteem and is saving money for a breast augmentation operation. The Burnhams' new neighbors are United States Marine Corps Colonel Frank Fitts (Cooper), his dissociative wife, Barbara (Janney), and their teenage son, Ricky (Bentley).

After watching a high school basketball game at which Jane is a cheerleader, Lester develops an infatuation with Jane's sexually precocious friend and classmate, Angela Hayes (Suvari). His fantasies entail a sexually aggressive Angela among red rose petals.

Frank controls Ricky with a strict disciplinarian lifestyle and gives him regular drug tests. Ricky, an avid pot smoker and drug dealer, makes deals with a client of his so he can have clean urine samples to get around these tests. Upon meeting a homosexual couple in the neighborhood, Frank reacts with disgust. Ricky frequently uses a hand-held video camera to record his surroundings and keeps hundreds of tapes in his bedroom.

Carolyn begins an affair with her business rival, Buddy Kane (Gallagher). Lester is about to be laid off when he blackmails his boss, quits his job and takes up low-pressure employment at a fast food chain. He trades in his car for a 1970 Pontiac Firebird, starts running, and lifts weights so he can "look good naked" to impress Angela, who he overheard telling Jane that she would find him sexy if he had more muscle. He takes up smoking marijuana, which he buys from Ricky. Lester continues to fantasize about Angela and flirts with her whenever she visits Jane, to the latter's disgust. Jane's friendship with Angela wanes and Jane begins a romantic relationship with Ricky; the two bond over his camcorder footage of what Ricky considers the most beautiful imagery he has filmed: a plastic bag that is being blown by the wind in front of a wall. Later that night, after a tense dinner and being slapped by her mother (who feels Jane is ungrateful for all she has), Jane reveals herself to Ricky through the window as he films her.

Lester accidentally discovers Carolyn's infidelity, but reacts indifferently. Buddy responds by breaking off the affair with the excuse that it could lead to a financially ruinous divorce for him. Frank becomes suspicious of Lester and Ricky's friendship and searches his son's room. He finds camcorder footage of Lester lifting weights in his garage while nude; Ricky had captured the footage by chance. After watching Ricky and Lester's drug rendezvous through the garage window, Frank mistakenly concludes that the two are engaged in a sexual relationship. That evening, Ricky returns home, where Frank beats him and accuses him of being a homosexual. Ricky falsely admits the charge and goads Frank into turning him out of their home. Ricky goes to Jane and asks her to flee with him to New York City. Angela protests and Ricky answers her vanity about her appearance by calling her ordinary.

Carolyn loads a gun and drives home. Frank confronts Lester in the garage and attempts to kiss him; Lester rebuffs the advance and Frank flees home. Moments later, Lester finds a distraught Angela; she asks him to confirm her beauty, and when Lester responds affirmatively, she begins to seduce him. After learning Angela is a virgin, Lester withdraws, and they bond instead over their shared personal frustrations. Angela tells Lester that Jane is in love; Lester answers Angela's question to his wellbeing by telling her he is happy. Angela goes to the bathroom and Lester smiles at a family photograph in the kitchen. A gunshot rings out and blood spatters on the kitchen wall in front of Lester as he is shot from behind. Ricky and Jane find him dead. Lester's final narration reflects on his life, and the actions of the other characters at the moment of his death are shown intermittently: Frank's returning home, bloodied, a gun missing from his collection, showing who the killer of Lester was; Carolyn's crying in their bedroom. Despite his death, Lester says he is happy, explaining that it is hard to be mad when there is so much beauty in the world.

Title Song

The track song Hua Yang De Nian Hua is based on a song by famous singer Zhou Xuan from the Solitary Island period. The 1946 song, used in Wong's film, is a peaen 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.

花樣的年華 The years slipped past like flowers...

月樣的精神 the vigorous light of the moon

冰雪樣的聰明 bright, clever as glacier snow

美麗的生活 our beautiful life

多情的眷屬 my affectionate spouse

圓滿的家庭 this happy and fulfilled family...

驀地里這孤島籠罩著慘霧愁云 suddenly gloomy clouds and fog loom across this solitary isle

慘霧愁云 clouds of gloom and melancholy

啊，可愛的祖國 Ah, my lovely Motherland

几時我能夠投進你的怀抱 when can I go back into your arms

能見那霧消云散 and see these fogs dispel

重見你放出光明 and behold you give off light again

花樣的年華 as in those flower-like years

月樣的精神 and of the moon...

In the mood

In the Mood is a stylistic masterpiece for so many reasons, the most obvious being the sheer beauty of it. Wong Kar-Wai's camera immortalizes everything in frame, from cigarette smoke to droplets of rain, from noodle steam to the grill of a small metal fan. And unlike the oppressive floating bag speech in American Beauty, In the Mood just shows you the damn beauty without the instructions. And what about that dress she had on during the umbrella scene? Hey now. And the narrow red hallway in that hotel. So Il Notte in Shining color. And the music? It proved once and for all that you don't need Yo-Yo Ma to have a good cello soundtrack. Now you could argue there's just too much beauty, too much music and slow motion,

In the mood for love

It is a restless moment.
She has kept her head lowered,
to give him a chance to come closer.
But he could not, for lack of courage.
She turns and walks away.

That era has passed.
Nothing that belonged to it exists any more.

He remembers those vanished years.
As though looking through a dusty window pane,
the past is something he could see, but not touch.
And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.

Plot

The movie takes place in Hong Kong, 1962. Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung), a journalist, rents a room in an apartment of a building of a Shanghaiese family, on the same day as So Lai-zhen (Maggie Cheung), a secretary from a shipping company. They become next-door neighbours. Each has a spouse who is working and often leaves them alone on overtime shift. Despite the presence of a friendly landlady, Mrs Suen, and bustling, mahjong-playing neighbours, Chow and So often find themselves alone in their rooms, and they begin to strike up a friendship.

Chow and So finally admit their shared suspicions that their spouses are cheating on them with each other. Chow persuades So to re-enact what they imagine might have happened between their partners' and their lovers, and slowly the line between play-acting and real romance blurs.

Chow invites So to help him and write a martial arts series story that he has longed to create for ages. As their relationship draws closer, people begin to notice and suspect they are in love. Meanwhile Chow and So are convinced that they are no more than friends and will not end up like their spouses. However, as time passes, Chow falls in love with So. Firm in his moral convictions that forbid adultery, he leaves Hong Kong for a job offered by his old friend in Singapore. Chow asks So to leave with him, but she turns him down and Chow then leaves on his own. But not before they spend one night together.

The next year, So goes off to Singapore and visits Chow's apartment there. She calls Chow, who is working for a Singaporean newspaper. Yet, when Chow picks up, So remains silent... Later, Chow realises she has visited his apartment after seeing a lipstick-stained cigarette butt left on his ashtray.

Three years later, So goes back to her old landlord, Mrs. Suen's apartment and pays her a visit. Knowing that she is about to emigrate to the USA, she asks to rent her property again, but this time the entire apartment. Later on, Chow also comes back, presumably only for a visit as well. He finds out that his old landlord, Mr. Koo, has emigrated to the Philippines. The man living in the room tells him that a woman and her son are living next door, and Chow smiles. On his way out, he pauses briefly at his old neighbor's door before leaving.

The setting of the final narration of the story is at Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Chow is seen visiting the Angkor Wat and whispers several years worth of secrets into a hole in a wall, before plugging the hole with mud - a method that he mentions by which a secret can be kept whilst dining with his old friend during his stay in Singapore.