The beautiful and mysterious story in Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love

Writer-director Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood For Love (2000) is a sad and strange tale of a man and a woman, each in an unhappy and faithless marriage, who meet and fall in love but find it impossible to leave their marriages begin a new life with each other. It's something of an Asian version of the British Brief Encounter (thus I was not surprised to see the Criterion linked these two films as one of their "double features"). It's a mysterious and moving film throughout: the man (Tony Leung) and the woman (Maggie Cheung) meet when they rent adjacent apartments (their apartments are essentially rooms within the same household - the film is set in the 1960s, when Honk Kong was obviously not prosperous and housing was a challenge). Both learn that their spouses in unfaithful, and the 2 (weirdly named Chow and Chan) begin what starts as a friendship but gradually builds into a love relationship - though it's not clear whether had sex (one would suppose so, but the film is oddly or perhaps intentionally discrete on that point). Eventually, their lives part and we see them in loneliness and sorrow, apart, in late life. There are many beautiful scenes and moments throughout the film, the mysterious ending in particular and also their break-up "rehearsals," which are quite a surprise (I won't give it away). The score is strange, including what seems to be a Latin samba selection and some classical motifs. The camerawork, with many slow panning shots, is great, especially the outdoor scenes in the rain and the crowded adjacent apartments, w/ all kinds of background noise and chaos as the 2 lovers try to find a bit of solitude and privacy - these scenes shot like a Wiseman documentary. All told, an intelligent, deeply sad story of two who meet at the wrong time, the wrong place.