In the Mood for Love is a 2000 Hong Kong art film directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu Wai. Its original Chinese title is 花樣年華 (Simplified Chinese: 花样年华, Yale (Cantonese): fa1 yeung6 nin4 wa4, Hanyu pinyin: Huāyàng niánhuá), which means The Age of Blossom. The English title derives from a Brian Ferry cover of the song "I'm in the Mood for Love"; the Chinese title from the 1940s number 花样的年华 by Zhou Xuan, used in the film.

The movie forms the second part of an informal trilogy, together with the first part Days of Being Wild (released in 1991) and the last part 2046 (released in 2004).

The movie takes place in Hong Kong, 1962. Chow Mo-Wan (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), a journalist, rents a room in an apartment for him and his wife on the same day as Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk), a secretary from a shipping company rents the adjacent room for her and her husband. As they become neighbors, they notice that they both have spouses that are working long into the evening. Despite the presence of a friendly landlady and neighbors, Chow and Su often find themselves alone in their rooms, and they begin to strike up a friendship.

Eventually, they realize that their spouses are cheating on them with each other. Their mutual grief causes them to start spending more and more time together. In an attempt to figure out how their spouses started having the affair, they begin to play an elaborate game where Chow Mo-wan pretends to be actually courting Su Li-zhen.

In between these moments of flirtation, to help take their minds off their spouse's affairs, Chow also asks Su Li-Zhen to assist him in writing a martial-arts serial. They spend long hours together discussing various story-lines, and eventually rent another apartment (numbered 2046) where they can meet and avoid the gossip of their neighbors.

Though they try to keep their relationship platonic since they think that they are better than their spouses, they soon begin to genuinely to have feelings for each other. Chow Mo-Wan asks Si Li-Zhen to leave her husband and run away with him. However, while Su Li-Zhen also has feelings for Chow, she refuses. Ironically, they find out that they are no better than their spouses, and that feelings can develop no matter how hard one tries to suppress them.

Unable to bear the agony, Chow leaves for Singapore. He eventually takes a trip to Angkor Wat and whispers a his pains and sorrows into the hole of a tree, before plugging the hole with mud. The loss of Su Li-Zhen is further explored in Wong Kar Wai's next film, 2046.

Wong states he was very influenced by Hitchcock's Vertigo while making this film, and compares Tony Leung's movie character to Jimmy Stewart's.

"the role of Tony in the film reminds me of Jimmy Stewart's in Vertigo. There is a dark side to this character. I think it's very interesting that most of the audience prefers to think that this is a very innocent relationship. These are the good guys, because their spouses are the first ones to be unfaithful and they refuse to be. Nobody sees any darkness in these characters - and yet they are meeting in secret to act out fictitious scenarios of confronting their spouses and of having an affair. I think this happens because the face of Tony Leung is so sympathetic. Just imagine if it was John Malkovich playing this role. You would think, 'This guy is really weird.' It's the same in Vertigo. Everybody thinks Jimmy Stewart is a nice guy, so nobody thinks that his character is actually very sick."
Two novel artistic devices are used in this movie. One is the use of seemingly repetitive scenes and the other is that certain sequences which look like one scene are actually a collage of numerous encounters of the two main characters in the movie. These techniques gave the audience the impression that these two characters were doing the same thing over and over again everyday over a very long period of time. However, paying attention to the dresses (qipao) that Maggie Cheung wears reveals that she wore a different dress in every single shot in those sequences. Obviously they are not the same shot edited over and over again but actually artistic shots with different costume and makeup for each shot.

Also, Chow and Su's spouses are rarely shown and in those occasions their faces are not seen, resulting in brief one-sided scenes in which Wong uses only the angle showing either Chow or Su.

Soundtrack:
Shigeru Umebayashi: "Yumeji's Theme" (originally from the soundtrack of Seijun Suzuki's Yumeji)
Michael Galasso: "Angkor Wat Theme", "ITMFL", "Casanova/Flute"
Nat King Cole: "Aquellos Ojos Verdes", "Te Quiero Dijiste", "Quizás, Quizás, Quizás"
Bryan Ferry: "I'm in the Mood for Love" (the inspiration for the title, found on e.g. the French 2 CD Soundtrack, not in the film)

In the Mood for Love made HK $8,663,227 during its Hong Kong run.

On February 2, 2001, the film opened in 6 North American theatres, earning a strong US $113,280 ($18,880 per screen) in its first weekend. It finished its North American run with a respectable US $2,738,980.

The film's total worldwide box office gross is US $12,854,953.