Mrs. Chan's (Maggie Cheung) dresses are always the same style, qipao, but the colors, patterns, and materials change. Bound to the same structure of dress, she is liberated by the wild, hip concerns of the '60s: chartreuse color with bold crisscrossed white stripes; translucent tan chiffon with squiggly lines; white cotton with black roses. Since all lust is restrained in the film, but all want for lust is not, such forceful desire is satiated with the gaze toward her dresses. The way her smooth, beautiful shoulders hold the sleeves of the qipao while her hips and ass shift slightly--but meaningfully, as the soft contents of the dress--is an act of pure lust.

Mrs. Chan's love affair with Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) has a perfect and painfully slow pace in which the audience has little chance to witness any tangible intimacy. Such a tense pace is luckily counteracted by the pace of her dresses: Mrs. Chan is in a new qipao every three minutes. The dresses count the days for us--every time she is in a new pattern we can tell she has to go to work again or she has just come back from work. All the dresses circle back into the film for the suggestion of longer periods of time. She circles through her wardrobe twice, and the first time a dress returns to the film, it's breathtaking.

In a scene to remember, Mrs. Chan gets stuck in Mr. Chow's room, afraid to leave and therefore tip off the neighbors of their love affair. She's merely paranoid. But the mood of love forces the human interior--that mess of breathing and thought, soul and heart--to fill all of the body. The skin is taut while in love, and it seems as though everyone can tell. And so taut are the colors and patterns of this scene: The wallpaper is a pattern of purple, citrus-shaped designs; the curtains are filled with blue curlicues; the sheets are plaid; the bedspread is hot pink; and her dress is alive with wild lines that crisscross over her heart. The room is blinding with emotion and as uncomfortable to be in as love.