in the mood for love

this poignant, beautiful scene is from wong kar-wei's film 'in the mood for love'. a story of a married man and a married woman living right next door to one another, who eventually discover that their spouses are having an affair. they begin a cautious friendship, leaning on another for support, but their own relationship becomes taut with desire, tension and deep yearning. the film is stunning and sensuous, quivering and ardent, yet it is also restrained— full of slow deliberate pauses...as if the camera were holding its' breath, but still gaping, still watching. i'm awed by the music and the movement of this scene, what the camera follows, the shapes and light, the small but perfect details that so explicitly begin to express what is between these two characters— a quiet but breathless need for one another, so subdued and inhibited on the surface, but relentless and bellowing beneath...and the aching space between them, unseen and indefinite, but a real distance that can't be closed, a separateness that endures despite their desire and proximity.