Spoiler Warning: This essay contains minor spoilers for the film In the Mood for Love (2000). Reader discretion is advised.
Set in 1960s Hong Kong, In the Mood for Love (2000), directed by Wong Kar-wai, is a film defined by what is left unsaid. It tells the story of Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen, two neighbors who, after discovering that their spouses are having an affair, find themselves drawn into a quiet affair of their own. Despite their unfolding attraction, they never act on their feelings, and the desire between them remains mostly unspoken. Their affair isn’t built on explicit declarations of love, but on the subtle lingering of silence—the unvoiced yearning that exists between their glances, their pauses, their restrained gestures. It’s a strange irony: something as cruel as an affair, which expectedly shatters trust and intimacy, leads these two into a silence, where desire and longing are palpably felt, yet never fully expressed. Like them, there have been times in my life when emotions felt too delicate, too complicated, or simply too hard to express. It’s not that the emotions were “risky,” but rather that they existed in a space between certainty and confusion, where I could feel something deeply without fully understanding what it was. There’s a gap in those moments, where the feeling is palpable but unformed, and it’s in this uncertain space that silence often takes over.
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Throughout the film, Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen's silence is neither awkward or uncomfortable but rather unexplainable yearning and desire. There’s a scene in the film where they spend an evening in a dark alley, neither speaking a word. The silence becomes a vessel for their desires offering both comfort and a kind of torment, suggesting what could have been, had circumstances been different. They’re holding back feelings and it tethers into the only thing holding them together. I’ve often found that silence can offer clarity, and at other times, it becomes the soul’s torment. It is in the stillness that understanding unfolds, but it is also in the stillness that misunderstanding can swallow us whole. Unlike the film’s carefully constructed silences, there have been moments in my life when silence seemed like a barrier, not a form of connection. The frustration of wanting to express something, yet being unable to find the right words, missing the right moment, or lacking the courage to speak them at all.
What I’ve come to realize is that silence, much like desire, is a complicated thing—neither inherently good nor bad. It simply is. Whether it brings clarity or frustration, silence remains a powerful and intricate tether in our emotions, relationships, and desires.
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One of the most profound internal conflicts we experience is the tension between what we feel and what we express. Whether it's desire, love, frustration, or sorrow, there are moments when the weight of what remains unspoken creates an emotional distance that can be both undeniable and painful. In In the Mood for Love, this tension is embodied in every glance exchanged between them. Their hearts may ache with longing, but their mouths remain sealed.
This tension between what is felt and what is said has played out in many of my relationships. At times, I’ve even suppressed my desires, not because I didn’t deserve them, but because I wasn’t sure how to reconcile them with false expectations of my own. How often do we hold our tongues and actions? When we hold back our feelings—whether out of fear, uncertainty, or self-preservation—it can lead to misunderstandings. I’ve seen relationships strained because of things left unsaid, a slow erosion of connection that happens when emotions are buried under layers of silent yearning. But in some ways, silence has felt necessary, almost protective. I’ve had times when staying quiet allowed me to preserve something fragile—whether it was my own vulnerability or the delicate balance of a relationship that could have been damaged by too much honesty, too soon.
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What is lost in silence? I’ve come to believe that, in some ways, nothing is truly lost. Silence is not a void—it is a form of communication in its own right. Perhaps it is the chance to fully understand each other, to express our desires, and to act on the emotions that stir inside us. Perhaps the question, then, is not whether silence is good or bad, but how we can learn to listen to it—not just in others, but in ourselves. How do we find the courage to express what’s hidden beneath our desires, and when is it best to leave certain things unsaid?