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.