Ya, you read the title right. The use of metaphors has always been a crucial part of storytelling when it comes to cinema. There are different ways to layer a story, sometimes water is used to layer a particular emotion and sometimes we get to see the use of flowers etc. Wong Kar-Wai food as a metaphor to layer his movies. Just like Chungking Express we got to see a lot of food references in this movie and to be honest, for me, this movie had better food references as compared to Chungking Express. If I have to comment upon him selecting food to juxtapose the emotions and characters, it was a pretty nice idea because food is something with which humans can get feel connected, just like music. Just like the way music has different genres, food has different tastes which can be easily blended with the emotions of the players on the screen.

The movie opens with Mrs. Suen talking about eating fish, here the fish kind of represents the storyline of the movie, like how Chans and Chows are inter-related yet different from one another. This sequence also gives us a chance to dive into Mrs. Suen’s character. She is the woman who tend to bond with people over food and mahjong. Not only this Wai also uses a painting of with few apples being nicely stacked and some here and there to show the situation of the apartment as Chans and Chows decide to move into the apartment on the same day. One more thing which grabbed my attention was Mrs. Chow giving an argument to her husband that she would go on the trip with someone else if he didn’t manage to get the leave from the office, nice foreshadowing, isn’t it?

As the movie progresses, we get to see 2 beautiful encounters Su Li-Zhen and Chow Mo-Wan in the wet market. In a particular frame, Mr. Chow is seen eating a dumpling and his facial expressions were of something between he’s trying to swallow something but he’s choking as well. Maybe he released what all was going behind his back. There is a repetitive use of ‘Mrs. Chan going to buy noodles' thing and we finally get to know that she doesn’t like to cook for herself. But later on, we see her making sesame syrup for Chow, this was the peak intimacy these characters would have ever shared.

Now let’s move towards the most crucial sequence of the movie. The meeting when both, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan about the adultery their spouses are indulged in. Chow Mo-Wan starts the conversation in somewhat circular manner, he does not come to the point directly because he knew that Mrs. Chan won’t be able to digest it. The same thing is represented by the cup of tea which was in front of Su Li-Zhen. She sips the tea in little portions, moves the spoon in circular manner inside the cup.

The whole sequence where Chow and Li-Zhen go out to eat at a restaurant, acting as each other’s spouse is very layered. First, the audience is unable to find out when they are acting and when they aren’t. Second, the food, we see Chow eating his food calmly and then he offers Mrs. Chan some mustard sauce which because of it’s hot nature turns the food spicy for her. This somewhat hints upon both the characters’ reaction to the whole adultery situation. Also, the panning shot used by Wai at the end of this sequence does its job perfectly.

Hope you all liked my observational from the movie. Do leave a comment and hit the like button.