In the texture of images. “In the Mood for Love” and suspended emotions

Authors

  • Eleonora Sforzi University of Florence

Keywords:

In the Mood for Love, atmospheres, emotions, fashion, surfaces

Abstract

Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) expresses cinema’s ability to represent emotions as atmosphere. Set in Hong Kong in the early 1960s, within the Chinese immigrant community, the unrealizable love between two neighbors is materialized by an emotional texture shaped by the interplay between spaces, costumes, and mise-en-scène. Drawing from the studies by Tonino Griffero on emotional atmospheres and by Giuliana Bruno on the cinematic surfaces, the feelings are examined in their hovering on the visual texture, fostered by auditory and tactile impressions conveyed by moving images.

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Author Biography

Eleonora Sforzi, University of Florence

Eleonora Sforzi is a Lecturer at the University of Florence, where she received her PhD in History of Fine and Performing Arts, in co-tutorship with the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her dissertation focused on a cultural history of fashion film in Italy and France, drawing inspiration from visual culture studies and media archaeology. As a post-doctoral researcher, she participated in two PRIN research projects: RevIS - Revisualizing Italian Silentscapes 1896-1922, at Tor Vergata University of Rome, and Cinema and the New Culture of Consumption in Italy (1950-1973), at the ‘G. d’Annunzio’ University of Chieti-Pescara. She has published several articles in academic journals and edited volumes, and participated in national and international conferences on film and media studies. She has edited, with Fabio Andreazza, the volume Cinema e consumi nelle riviste italiane. Dal dopoguerra agli anni settanta (Cinema and consumption in Italian magazines. From the Postwar Period to the Seventies; Marsilio, Venezia 2024).

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Published

2025-12-15

How to Cite

Sforzi, E. (2025). In the texture of images. “In the Mood for Love” and suspended emotions. SigMa - Rivista Di Letterature Comparate, Teatro E Arti Dello Spettacolo, (9), 198–219. Retrieved from https://serena.sharepress.it/index.php/sigma/article/view/12766

Issue

No. 9 (2025): The emotions of silence from silent films to sound films ‘sans paroles’

Section

Sezione monografica

License

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