Frustrating Formulas
Frustrating Formulas
Popular Genre and In the Mood for Love
This chapter sets out to clarify Wong Kar-wai’s reliance on popular genre, qualifying the critical perspective that Wong is an “anti-genre” filmmaker. Rather, genre is seen here to facilitate three interlinked objectives for Wong: it functions to commercial advantage, attracting financiers and audiences; it animates major authorial preoccupations; and it permits Wong’s cinephilia full play. The chapter goes on to offer a large-scale analysis of In the Mood for Love and the ways in which it negotiates the conventions of traditional melodrama. This analysis isolates the prime thematic concerns that inform so many of Wong’s characters and stories, manifest within In the Mood for Love through a narrative emphasis on fate, personal responsibility, authenticity, chance, and coincidence.
Keywords: Cinephilia, Melodrama, the policier, road movies, science fiction, romantic comedy, swordplay film, affect, Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism
Hong Kong Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .