That discussion with the landlady hit Mrs. Chow hard. When Mr. Chan called her to ask when she could meet again to work on the stories — that the editor is getting antsy for new copy — she told him that the landlady gave her a lecture and that she wouldn’t be coming anytime soon.

And so we get another musical interlude and the mood has returned to longing. Mrs. Chow spends more time around the apartment, makes a show of spending face time with the women there. But her head is somewhere else. She stares longingly out windows.

Mr. Chan, of course, feels much the same. We see him at work in a newsroom, seemingly joking with the men around him, but he can’t help but to gaze out of windows as well.

I am away on a work trip and dealing with a heavy case of insomnia. So tonight I caught a later Wong Kar-Wai movie called “My Blueberry Nights,” his first film in English and set in the U.S. starring Norah Jones, Jude Law, Rachel Weiss and Natalie Portman. It’s another stylish movie about longing, beautifully lit, with another memorable soundtrack. And the story is yet another series of vignettes about loss and hopeless desire.

But it doesn’t land nearly as strongly as “In the Mood for Love,” and I’m not quite sure why. Maybe the exoticism of “Mood” is it’s greatest assets — a bygone era, clothing we’ll never see again, customs long disposed. It’s the physical barriers of time and place that make the movie feel so rich and romantic.

Mr. Chan leaves a message for Mrs. Chow at work. Her boss gives a hypocritical disapproving look at her. She takes the note and goes back to work, pretending the note meant nothing to her.

I’ll close here and leave the next scene its own space. It’s one of the most beautiful sequences in the history of cinema — the rain scene.