In The Mood For Love

By RICHARD CORLISS

Whispers in doorways. Long, longing looks. Desire at war with propriety. This enthralling, enigmatic, romantic drama from Asia's most influential auteur (Chungking Express) is an essay in appetite and inhibition. In 1962 Hong Kong, two neighbors (Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-wai) learn that their spouses are having an affair with each other. Slowly they are drawn into their own web of resentment, guilt and lust. Do the cuckolds have their own affair? That is for the viewer to judge. What's beyond dispute is the artful evocation of a world of glamour and deceit, humidity and heartbreak--it's the year's first unmissable film event. Recommended to anyone who's ever felt the fear and lure of falling in love.

--R.C.