What would it be like to conceal your emotion when you are deeply in love with someone? It is what happens to Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk), who are next-door neighbors in an apartment building in Hong Kong, 1962. Love and marriage is the most essential underlying issue in the film. Interacting with another important element, that is the Chinese traditional culture on respectability, love is expressed in an implicit …showed first 75 words of 583 total…

…showed last 75 words of 583 total…boy move to a new apartment, so Chow cannot find them when he comes to visit Hong Kong from Singapore. The unstable external environment is the projection of the inner conflict between desire and tension of the lovers. Their separating eventually is caused by their unable to withstand the watchful eyes of the society. The question left for us to ponder is: will the ending be different if the story happens in the 21st century?