The film In the mood for love by Wong Kar Wai work on a level of temporality and movement that is not limited to a tangibility or objectivity. One technical particularity of the film make this element visible easily: the use of step-printing images. Different than the slow-motion, the step-printing give a sense of raw emotion to what we see on screen. The movements of the characters in the image became a bit jerky but keep a natural gracefulness. In example; when Mrs. Chang and Mr. Chow are in the alley, rehearsing their break-up, Mr. Chow take her hand for a moment and slowly leave her there. When we see the detail of this gesture, the step-printing is used. At that moment, the idea of time is an issue of impression and perception (from her part) of the emotion link to the act but also to the meaning of what happen. The jerky movement of her abandonned hand moving up her arm and squeezing it, show the pain of the moment. It could also be thought as her memory of this pain or emotion. It is how she'll remember (or how she is remembering -- depending on how you interprete the narrative) the feeling and impression that she felt at that moment. It is not a memory of the moment itself but of a subjective 'souvenir' of her inside emotion.
If I link this particularity of this film to our blog, it is because I believe that the thinker that we have seen don't talk about physical temporality or movement. They are using those terms in a much larger meaning. For me, Wong Kar Wai push the meaning of time and movement further than a lot of director in In the mood for love -- he don't want us to remember what is happening but to remember the feeling of it; the feeling that we have felt while watching it, and the feeling we sees been felt by the characters of the film.
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