In the Mood for Dancing

Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love is so exquisitely rendered and precisely calibrated that it seems it could only have ever been conceived of as the pensive, formal meditation that it is. But surprisingly, neither Wong nor his stars—Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung—knew exactly what shape the film was going to take when they started working on it. As Wong’s behind-the-scenes documentary @ In the Mood for Love (a supplement on our edition) reveals, when they began shooting, the general sense of the project was more “naughty, erotic,” as Leung describes it, and even a bit goofy. Wong later made the decision to reshoot the entire movie, but delightfully, some of the footage from that original lighter film still exists. Watch this deleted scene, introduced by Leung, which will give you an idea of what the other In the Mood for Love might have been.