'MOOD' FULL OF LUSH IMAGES.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

Wong Kar-wai's ravishing new film ``In the Mood for Love'' could just have easily been named after another lush pop song - ``The Look of Love.'' This gorgeous movie about two wounded people on the wrong side of a love affair offers a procession of smoldering, sensuous images of its attractive lead actors and the retro Hong Kong they inhabit. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more beautiful movie or one that possesses a more anguished sense of betrayal and loss.

``It is a restless moment. Hong Kong 1962,'' reads the title card at the beginning of ``In the Mood for Love.'' And for the next 97 minutes Wong hauntingly brings alive that restiveness, telling a story that's short on narrative but long on mood, feeling and imagery.

Chow (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk) live in a crowded apartment complex full of narrow hallways and cramped living quarters. They moved here on the same day, arriving with their respective spouses and possessions. The fact that their belongings keep getting mixed up and delivered to the wrong apartment is a sign of a more significant intermingling to come.

Chow and Su Li-zhen enjoy a cordial, polite relationship, bumping into each other as they return - alone - to their respective rooms. Chow soon notices certain coincidences that indicate that his wife is having an affair with Su Li-zhen's husband. (The spouses are never shown in the film.)

How the damaged parties react is the heart of the matter here, and in Wong's hands, it is a tightrope walk of foreplay, repression, jealousy and, ultimately, deep, abiding love. Chow initiates a friendship with Su Li-zhen, desperately trying to understand how their spouses could have strayed. But what he really wants is revenge. Accomplishing that, however, proves achingly problematic.

Wong's previous films (among them ``Chungking Express,'' ``Happy Together'' and ``Days of Being Wild,'' the latter of which featured both Leung and Cheung) have established him as a groundbreaking filmmaker, a director who wields a camera like a paintbrush, slowly accumulating details until the finished product coalesces into a shimmering whole. Here, Wong's camera watches Chow and Su Li-zhen from doorways, nooks - even underneath a bed - its deliberate movements perfectly capturing the couple's barely masked yearning.

And Wong doesn't just focus on his frustrated lovers; his camera is drawn to small, revealing details - drifting cigarette smoke, splashing raindrops, Chow's slicked hair and narrow-cut suit, Su Li-zhen's seemingly inexhaustible parade of high-collared, snug silk dresses. Over and over again we hear Nat King Cole's smoothly singing ``Quizas, quizas, quizas,'' which, translated, mean ``perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.''

The words hint at hope; Cole's smooth romantic delivery points to romance. Wong's camera, however, suggests a much more melancholy outcome. Restraint has never looked so good.

``IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE''

(Rated PG: for thematic elements and brief language)

The stars: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Wong Kar-wai. Released by USA Films.

Running time: One hour, 37 minutes.

Playing: Landmark's Rialto in South Pasadena; Landmark's Westside Pavilion in West Los Angeles; Laemmle's Monica in Santa Monica.

Our rating: Four stars

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Maggie Cheung Man-Yuk and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai are brought together by their spouses' infidelity in the film ``In the Mood for Love.''