Blue Valentines

Blue Valentines

2 Episodes

The bittersweet pangs of impossible love—conveyed in a fleeting gesture or glance that says more than words ever could—are given swooning expression in this double bill of yearning romantic masterpieces. Set to the immortal strains of Rachmaninoff, David Lean’s BRIEF ENCOUNTER aches with unspoken longing as Celia Johnson’s prim and proper housewife and Trevor Howard’s married doctor are drawn to the edge of an illicit affair amid the suburban railway stations and tearooms of postwar Britain. Halfway across the world, in a lushly stylized evocation of 1960s Hong Kong, Wong Kar-wai maps the heart-racing, will-they-won’t-they tension that simmers between Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung as neighbors who discover that their own spouses are having an affair in the intoxicating IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE.

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Blue Valentines
  • Brief Encounter

    Episode 1

    Directed by David Lean • 1945 • United Kingdom
    Starring Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard

    After a chance meeting on a train platform, a married doctor (Trevor Howard) and a suburban housewife (Celia Johnson) begin a muted but passionate, and ultimately doomed, love affair. With its evocatively fog-en...

  • In the Mood for Love

    Episode 2

    Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 2000 • Hong Kong
    Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Maggie Cheung Man-yuk

    Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery abo...