The constant presence of mirrors, walls, doorframes and narrow passages pose tropes for the labyrinthine quality of the mind and its ceaseless movement along the unending path of remembered experience, slowly striding into the depth of memory. While detailed and artistically filmed, viewers are most likely to find themselves enraptured by a sense of obscurity on screen. The interior of the room is frequently filmed in other roundabout ways. For instance, in a scene where Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan are sitting next to each other in the room, the shot is taken through the window with its transparent curtains and blinds, pointing to the impossibility of returning to the past because it is covered by new sheets of time, as well as adding up to the effect of the distorting power of memory. The close-up shot of the cinematography carefully and inadvertently tracks from Mr. Chow’s reflection to Mrs. Chan’s back and then to her reflection, which overall gives the viewers an indirect view, again relating to the lack of an absolute, clear foci of the characters during their intimate moments.

 

Towards the middle of the film, the crowded room is played out again with another game of Mahjong. The music and the camera’s position is the same, except on this occasion, Mrs. Chan is the reluctant participant. She is staying in because her landlady has reprimanded her for going out alone too often, for her being as an already-married woman. The brevity of slowed time and enclosure of the walls and doorframes reflect a sense of entrapment: being trapped by the conventions of a conservative society and infidelity. As the camera moves into the space for a close-up of her expression, the viewers may seem to be able to share her loneliness and solidarity; yet, in fact, the camera still remains hovering by the obstructive doorway. As she traverses across the room, towards the balcony window at the outer reaches of the lens.

 

The repetitions of the use of a system of prisms and interior setting, such as mirrors, window panes and walls have intensified the protagonist’s feeling of lost and entrapment. It is thusly underlined by the motto at the end: He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.

 

Perhaps the image seen through from the window is expanded outwardly or rhizomatically, that folds itself into self-reflexive loop predisposed towards differences.