Christopher Doyle on ‘In the Mood for Love’, ‘Chungking Express’ and working with Wong Kar-wai

Cinematographer Christopher Doyle discusses his collaboration with filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, and their influence on modern Hong Kong cinema in an exclusive interview with MetroPlus

A married man and a married woman, living in rented rooms of neighbouring apartments, come to terms with the infidelity of their respective partners. They gaze into each other’s eyes each time they meet, in cramped spaces and dark alleyways.

Their repressed sexual desire is brought out in a way that is both evocative and sensual by master Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai in his seminal feature, In the Mood for Love (2000). But the man responsible for the lush visuals to capture the intimacy and emotional state the characters share, is Australian-born cinematographer Christopher Doyle.

Doyle first arrived in Hong Kong in 1971 at the age of 19. It was a city he fell in love with and would often be the subject of his camera’s gaze over the next 50 years. He says his first encounter with Chinese cinema happened around this time; Doyle remembers the time he was enamoured by Taiwanese actor Hsu Feng, “I guess most of what I happen to have done since then is to try and celebrate such women,” says Doyle in an email interview, as part of MUBI India’s retrospective of Wong Kar-wai.

Doyle’s first collaboration with Kar-wai was for the 19991 film, Days of Being Wild. But it was Chungking Express (1994) that put them on the map, gaining international prominence and recognition. Doyle is known for his experimental approach to cinematography, while Kar-wai has earned a reputation for filming in a haphazard fashion; they share eight films together. It is a relationship, Doyle admits, that is as intimate as their characters shared on screen. Edited excerpts:  

Rapture. Enchantment. I am like a kid in a candy store. How a space engages us; how an actor moves within the space, light reflects off faces and surfaces. It totally entraps me, sucks me in and then we dance.

I think we have to blame the production designer, costume and make-up guru, and later genius editor William Cheung Shu Ping. William and I had worked together on five films already, and then he suggested to Kar-wai that we three work together. Our three personalities are so diverse that I guess William was expecting some kind of “creative fission” among the three of us. I am not sure how it became fusion rather than frisson.

But I do know that the give and take of our personalities and our total commitment to our space is the reason the films feel and look and resonate the way they still seem to do.