Okay, so the movie itself has nothing to do with Christmas, but it’s a perfect film, and it’s a VTIFF tradition to spend some part of the holiday with Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Maggie Cheung Man Yuk in Hong Kong, 1962. Chow Mo-Wan (Leung) and Su Li-Zhen (Cheung) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. No two stars were ever photographed with more care than Leung and Cheung here. With its aching soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Lee Ping Bing, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past two decades of cinema, and is a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career and cinema in general. Small wonder that Sight & Sound’s most recent poll (2022) placed In the Mood for Love at #5 in its list of the greatest films ever made.