mise-en-scène – Intermittent Mechanism

Characterizing the Costumes in Clueless

June 4, 2020October 10, 2026intermechanismcontributor

by Mimi
University of Chicago CMST 10100, Intro to Film
Spring 2020

Clueless by Amy Heckerling includes some of the most memorable costume design from the 1990s. Anyone who has seen the movie, even if they cannot remember a specific outfit, remembers the fashion as distinctly bold and of the moment. The movie is about a girl who loves shopping, so naturally the costumes reflect that. I counted and the protagonist, Cher Horowitz, wears 42 distinct outfits throughout the movie. That is a new costume roughly every two minutes. These outfits, and those of others in the movie, provide insight into character, demonstrate relationships and showcase the power of fashion for a teenage girl with a credit card.

Mad for Plaid

The most iconic outfit of this movie, one that has been recreated over and over, and still sells as a Halloween costume is, of course, Cher’s yellow plaid coordinated school look:

The first thing Cher does at the beginning of the movie when she’s introducing herself to the audience is to put together this outfit. This costume says a lot about Cher. For one, it speaks to a level of perfectionism. There are several pieces in this outfit and they all perfectly match with each other. Even her chewing gum matches.

Not only is the outfit coordinated within itself, but it is coordinated with her location. It’s a plaid schoolgirl-esque outfit and she’s wearing it to school. Cher sports a number of these looks throughout the movie, exclusively at school.

She is someone who cares about and knows how to dress for an occasion, and plaid becomes a signifier of that in the movie. She even has coordinated plaid pajamas!

We see other characters adopt similar looks but always in relation to Cher. The outfit Dionne is wearing when she is introduced is also a coordinated plaid schoolgirl look, showing her and Cher’s affinity and their like-mindedness when it comes to the importance of fashion. It’s significant however that Dionne never wears a coordinated plaid outfit again. For Dionne, plaid serves only to demonstrate her connection to Cher.

Tai’s first post-makeover outfit at school includes a plaid skirt and color coordination. Cher has transformed Tai in her image and the outfit reflects that. Later in the movie, when Tai reveals her crush on Josh and is seen flirting with him, she wears an entirely coordinated plaid schoolgirl look.

This second plaid outfit is a culmination of Tai threatening to replace Cher’s status, beginning with her increased popularity after her dramatic experience at the mall and coming to a head with trying to usurp Josh’s affection. The callback outfit shows how much of a threat Tai is to Cher, and the power that Cher’s makeover had on Tai’s social status. The rest of the movie, Tai wears no plaid.

In fact, the only other major character who wears plaid as consistently as Cher is Josh. With Josh however, it is not a coordinated, event-appropriate outfit. It’s grungey plaid flannels fit for a Nietszche-reading college freshman.

On Cher, plaid highlights her dedication to perfection and fashion. On Josh, plaid shows a similar dedication to aesthetic but that of someone who “doesn’t care” about fashion. He aggressively signals the opposite message that Cher does, but with the same pattern. The way they both employ plaid shows how their characters are different sides of the same coin. They have differing world-views but at the end of the day they have an undeniable chemistry and compatibility. Their matching plaid outfits visually demonstrate this for the viewer.

My final note on plaid is on how it coincides with Cher’s growth throughout the movie. At the beginning of the movie she is a somewhat silly schoolgirl who emphasizes appearance and shallow approval too much, and her schoolgirl plaid skirts reflect that. After realizing this about herself and performing her “makeover on her soul” Cher has ditched these schoolgirl skirts and now almost exclusively wears pants. However — plaid pants!

She has not abandoned her love of fashion or her perfectionist ways. Cher is more serious and grown-up but she still remains true to herself and her love of fashion, and the proof is in the plaid.

Cher as a Beau Ideal

Cher isn’t the only fashionista at Beverly Hills High. Every single peripheral character has their own fashion statement. These peripheral characters are largely fleshed out through their fashion and serve as foils to Cher’s clothes. Through their clothes these side characters establish their own personalities, and when compared to Cher’s clothing, carve out nuances in her character as well.

Take Dionne as an example. Clearly, she is just as fashion-conscious as Cher, and that is their main bonding point. However, her clothes are typically more garish and revealing than Cher’s. For instance, she accessorizes with plastic-looking hats where Cher leaves herself unadorned.

Where Cher wears short schoolgirl skirts Dionne does the same but in pleather and with fishnets.

Dionne matches the thread in her braids to her top, in equally bright colors. At the same party, Cher wears a bright bold outfit but in a solid color, and her hair is in an elegant and effortless updo.

Dionne’s actions go along with her brighter, bolder, and tackier style. She gets in dramatic fights with her boyfriend for everyone to see. She is also bad at driving, but to the point where she has a screaming fit on the freeway. Cher has similar qualities – being whiny with Josh and running through stop signs come to mind – but hers are more subdued than Dionne and in general Cher has a more genteel demeanor. Their clothes reflect this and provide a visual aid that establishes these aspects of their personalities.

Another peripheral character that really sticks out through her clothing is Amber. I discussed previously Cher’s coordination and perfectionism, and Amber shares those qualities when it comes to her fashion but takes it to an extreme level. Look at this outfit:

It’s a callback to an earlier scene when Cher is picking up Dionne for school and pokes fun at her hat saying, “Shopping with Dr. Seuss?” and Dionne retorts “Well at least I wouldn’t skin a Collie to make my backpack!” holding up Cher’s fluffy purse. Amber has a similar purse, but much larger, and her entire outfit is constructed around that material. Not only is she coordinating to an extreme level, but with a fabric established within the world of the movie to be gaudy and over the top.

All of Amber’s outfits are meticulously coordinated like this, to the point where it becomes cartoonish:

Also, her hair is always perfectly coiffed, with obvious effort and a lot of hairspray going into it.

This stands in contrast to Cher’s easygoing blonde locks that seem to effortlessly fall from her head looking naturally beautiful.

Amber has even less screen time and fewer lines than Dionne, but her personality is clearly demonstrated through clothing. She is attention-seeking, image-obsessed, and lacks elegance. All of these traits are established through her boldly cartoonish looks that portray her as a “fashion victim.” Cher, in contrast to Amber is much more effortless and stylish. Although Cher’s outfits are meticulously accessorized and coordinated, she knows when to stop.

A famous saying in fashion, from Coco Chanel, is “Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.” Chanel’s designs were known for their luxurious elegance and effortless class. Cher’s outfits in contrast to Amber’s and Dionne’s show this side of her. They establish her as more level-headed and mature in comparison to her friends and place her as the beau ideal of fashion and teenage girlhood at Beverly Hills High.

A Sense of Control

Right after Cher and Dionne meet Tai, they offer to give her a makeover. Tai originally declines and, among their pleas, Dionne says this about Cher:

More than just makeovers, the movie shows time and time again how Cher gains a sense of control through fashion and shopping. The first thing we see her do is assemble the iconic yellow plaid outfit. Perhaps even more than the outfit, the process of choosing the outfit reveals Cher’s character. She has a computer system in her room that scans her clothes for mismatches and provides a mockup of her wearing the clothes.

Cher is a savvy woman who seeks control over her life through clothing. She treats fashion as more than a hobby. It is something that involves precision. There are right and wrong answers. It is a tool for her to wield, and the most important one in her arsenal.

Cher demonstrates this ability to use fashion as a tool for her own gain when she gives her teacher a makeover. Her grades are lackluster in two classes, so she gives one of those teachers a makeover and sets them up with each other, and sure enough, they change her grades in her favor.

Later, Cher uses fashion to control a situation with her father. When Christian picks her up to go to a party, her Dad tells her to cover up because her clothes are too revealing. Cher obliges, but covers up with a see-through garment. Here she uses clothing to stop a fight and be able to wear the clothes she wants, so she can try to get the guy she wants.

Her relationship with Christian is one where she has an unprecedented lack of control. Before finding out he is gay, she wants to seduce him. Even if he weren’t gay, wanting someone to see you in a romantic way is still a pretty powerless position to be in. Discounting lying and plastic surgery, there is not much one can do to control whether someone will like you or not. But, Cher still attempts to gain power in this situation through her clothing. She wears more revealing clothes to attract him, and when he is coming over for a night alone, she spends almost all day picking an outfit with Dionne.

Because fashion has worked like this for her in the past, Cher believes the right outfit will give her the power to control whether a boy likes her.

Cher has a similar approach when it comes to her driving test. We continually see Cher drive poorly and never really see her practice or attempt to get better. Then, the day of the test she throws a fit when she can’t find her “most responsible ensemble” – a “white collarless shirt from Fred Segal.” However, like with Christian, her outfit would have made no difference. She still fails, no matter how capable she looks. Her losing her ability to control her world through fashion plays into her character’s turning point in the story.

After failing her driving test, when she is at her lowest point and is soul searching for why she is so affected by Tai’s crush on Josh, Cher stops her inner monologue and goes into a boutique to buy a dress. The scene cuts to her with a shopping bag, still soul searching. Her life has been turned upside down when she realizes that she can’t talk her way out of failing her driving exam and her friend likes the same boy as her – and her response is to go shopping. At the most unstable moment in the movie Cher seeks a sense of control through fashion.

When Cher realizes that she loves Josh and needs a “makeover for her soul” she also involves fashion, but this time not for her own benefit. She acts as Captain for a group that is collecting items, like clothing, for families affected by the fictitious “Pismo Beach Disaster.” It’s notable that Cher is using fashion for good, but also that the Pismo Beach relief involves more than clothing. She also collects things like canned goods and kitchen wear. This is a small development that shows Cher’s overall growth. She is still trying to find control in a chaotic world, but now it is not just for herself, and not just through fashion.

The costume design in Clueless illustrates all the nuances in Cher’s character, and all the steps she takes in her maturation. She goes from a silly schoolgirl who wants to always has to get her way to a level-headed woman that gives back to the world – and remains effortlessly elegant throughout. Both the costumes worn by the characters and her character’s attitudes towards the costumes in the movie flesh out her personality and its evolution.

A Look Into Parasite‘s Decor

April 15, 2020October 10, 2026intermechanismcontributor

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by Zach, Meagan, Dylan, Gabriela, and Alan
University of Chicago CMST 10100, Intro to Film
Spring 2020

Position of the Houses: How it Reflects a Class Struggle

Kim House

The Kim house is below ground in a busy and cluttered area of poor families with people disrespecting their home (including a couple of drunk men peeing on the property). Their house itself has very poor lighting and really the only pieces of technology are outdated, insufficient for their daily lives, and are in very bad shape. Their house has a very unorthodox structure to it, yet it can also be said that the Kims are very good at using what they have in order to make it work, regardless of the clutter that it creates in their home (E.g. socks drying on a ceiling fan and trying to latch onto any wifi possible). They have supplies for work (pizza boxes) stacked everywhere and store clutter in every room. Even the toilet is in a strange place, sitting on top of a ledge. There appears to be no beds in the home. In the opening scenes of the film, we see the patriarch of the Kim family resting his eyes and lying in a fetal position atop a thin rug. This layout shows how they manage to scrape by using what they have in the most efficient way possible. The family has this massive window that they have to look up to see out of. This could be a metaphor for the family wanting to climb up the socioeconomic ladder and take on a world that they don’t feel is theirs. On the outside of the window, it looks almost as if it is barred. This again shows how they are locked away from the rest of the world, unable to succeed and advance up the socioeconomic ladder.

Park House

The Park house is everything that the Kim house isn’t. The Park house has a beautiful garden on its entrance and as the audience gets the initial shot of the property, it is obvious, even before it is mentioned, that the house itself is a work of art. The Park house is secluded on top of a massive hill, which saves it from being destroyed during the rain (the downfall of the Kim house because they are at the bottom where all the water heads). Instead of the clutter featured in the Kim house, their house is simple, clean, and modern. The house is both home-y and intimidating, but most importantly is an object of idealism. It is symbolic of success and excess, the antithesis of what is to come towards the end of the film. Unlike the Kim family who needs to make use of everything they have, the Park family has the space and luxury to keep their house clear of clutter. The family has many unneeded pieces of technology featured in their house including a television in the bathroom and a borderline iPad in the wall. Another big difference is that there is this massive window (as if it is a movie screen and the family is watching a movie out of it) that the family uses to look out into a beautiful array of trees and grass. A key difference here is that the family is looking out onto their property on equal ground, which could be a metaphor of that they are complacent on where they are in society on a socioeconomic level with the land that they own. Although the Park house and the Kim house are both isolated in a sense, the manner of isolation casts a very different light on their relation to society. The Kim house was pushed underground and seemed to trap the family, preventing them from reaching beyond their squalor. The Park house, on the other hand, uses beauty to isolate itself. They have created their own barrier to shield themselves from the unpleasantness of the lower classes in society.

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Stairs: A Motif for a Socioeconomic Climb

There is an emphasis on stairs in both the Kim and Park residences, a metaphorical device of climbing to wealth and significance. The set of stairs leading down to the Kim residence creates an effect of being subservient to the outside world, of being below even the drunken man who urinates on the street. The steps used to reach the toilet are filthy, yet it functions as the passageway to the tiny window (again, an entrance to the more ordered outside world). It forces the Kim family to constantly consider their place in society and to become parasitic beings. In the Park residence, stairs are a common motif of the home’s elaborate architecture. They even seem to function as a mode of communication between the Parks, Kims, and Moon-gwang and husband. Between the delicately placed champagne flutes and decorative fine china, something a lot less sophisticated is found deep in the basement. Even when the Kim’s son seizes in horror to the sight of Oh Geun-sae peering from the base of the stairs, the audience seems a glimpse of the calamity that will ensue when social classes intersect.

Intentions/Objectives: Decisions Made by the Production Design Team

It’s interesting to note that both houses were built from “scratch” by production designer Lee Ha Jun. For the Kim’s house, the set designers and production staff travelled to basement neighborhoods and used silicon modeling to replicate the environment, such as power lines and bricks. Jun says, “Nonetheless, we wanted to avoid having it [the houses] look like a set. We thought of the space as another actor. I told the art and set department that instead of trying to build Kitaek’s semi-basement neighborhood, we should just bring it over”. Jun also mentioned that once they started actually creating the Kim home, some of their dimensions – for doorways for example – were ‘off’, and so they had to makeshift props to retroactively fit the space. He mentioned that this ended up being a positive as many of these lower socioeconomic neighborhoods undergo the same process… that is, many years of iterative “fixes” to broken walls, doors, appliances, etc. He also mentioned that the small bathroom was modeled off his own experiences in college of having a moldy/overcrowded one.

While in the film it is mentioned that the Park family’s house was built by a famous architect, that is of course not the actual case. Jun states that while they wanted to build a house with custom furniture that made you feel like it was not only a real one, but also belonged to a wealthy family, he more importantly clarified that his number one priority was to create the home keeping in mind spatial relationships and camera angles they’d need that would be conducive to the plot – such as characters watching each other – as well as “blocking” (which the third group may speak more about). Aside from that, to accomplish the realness effect (that of an affluent family’s home), Jun actually included real art works such as the image of a forest made by Korean artist Seung-mo Park (see below). Jun says that this artwork was intended to serve as a status symbol.

The Park families wealth is also demonstrated towards the beginning of the movie when the house is first being shown to Kevin. The mother of the Park family stops to show Kevin the family’s photos that have been hung on a wall of the house. The photos consist of some family portraits as well as wedding photos and impressive accomplishments that the father of the Park family has achieved. This pocket of photos displays the Park family’s wealth by showing that they are able to fund these photos and most likely have hired professional photographers to take them. The photos also show the career accomplishments of the father of the Park family that alludes to his major company that has become successful, as shown in the magazine cover that has been framed on the wall. In addition, in the photos the family is all matching wearing fancy clothes. This is especially prominent in the wedding photo, as the mother of the Park family is wearing a beautiful wedding gown with a long train. Wedding gowns to begin with are already very expensive, but the glamour of the mother’s wedding gown shows that it would not be something that many families would be able to afford.

Inspect-’em-Ups: Genre Core and Periphery

September 30, 2019October 16, 2026Ian Bryce Jones

One last post for September: I did indeed succeed in getting the second part of my new series on detective games out of the door by the end of the month. And it’s a long one, too! Long enough that I don’t feel bad about the dry spell that’s inevitably going to set in in October.

I’ve written about most of the games in this video on the blog before, mostly for things like capsule reviews and walkthroughs. This is the only time I’ve done any sort of analysis of them, though. (Excepting maybe Gone Home.) In addition to being long, it’s also mostly brand-new material, which is not something I can say about most of my videos.

Script below the jump.

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Stream Pools: Space and Narrative Pacing in Games

January 10, 2017August 25, 2017Ian Bryce Jones

Ian here—

I spent the first week of 2017 catching up on things I hadn’t played from 2016. But all play and no work makes Ian a dull boy, so it’s time to get back to writing, even if it’s of the casual sort.

Fair warning: In this post I’m going to dip into some unapologetic formalism as a way of best expressing some otherwise entirely subjective reactions. Obviously, there are pitfalls to this. Formalism puts off some. Unabashedly subjective attempts at criticism puts off others. But, whatever—this is my blog, and sometimes I like to post things that aren’t lesson plans. (Also, a note: I’m going to have fewer of those posted in the foreseeable future. I’ve posted most of my best lessons from past courses at this point, and I’m only teaching one class this term, one I’ve taught before.)

Below the fold, I play with some vocabulary, and offer thoughts on three more interesting games of 2016. These are short takes, and it is quite likely that I will be writing more on some of these in the near future.

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Five Ways to Look Smart while Teaching PlayTime

December 22, 2016December 16, 2016Ian Bryce Jones

playtime_screenshot_00-43-04 — The travel posters are the obvious gag. But can you spot the fake cars?

Ian here—

So, this isn’t a proper lesson plan. It’s just a quick cheat sheet. When teaching PlayTime, I pair it with Kristin Thompson’s chapter “Play Time: Comedy n the Edge of Perception” in her book Breaking the Glass Armor. (I consider myself incredibly lucky that I can pair one of my favorite films with a piece of writing that I consider to be one of the more astute and persuasive pieces of academic film criticism ever written.) My lesson, therefore, largely revolves around the conclusions of Thompsons’ analysis: that “the comic and the non-comic become indistinguishable” in PlayTime, and that the way the film “forces us into new viewing procedures” holds the potential to “successfully transform our perception in general.”[i] To view PlayTime, in other words, is to encounter a new way of seeing the world, one that might persist beyond the theater.

How do you successfully persuade students that PlayTime requires specific viewing procedures from its audience, ones unlike those we use when viewing a more traditional narrative film? My tactic is pretty simple: I pull student attention to moments that reward close viewing. Thompson herself lists a bunch of these in her chapter. I like to point to additional, different ones, so that I can show students new, unexpected visual rewards—therefore making both me and Tati seem smarter than we otherwise would! Please feel free to steal these.

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Silhouettes, Shadows, & Smoke: Lighting in In the Mood for Love

June 10, 2015October 10, 2026intermechanismcontributor

by Sherlock
University of Chicago CMST 10100, Intro to Film
Spring 2015

Wong Kar-wei’s In the Mood For Love depicts the story of a man (Chow) and a woman (Su) who, both suspecting that their spouses are involved in extramarital affairs, become close companions to each other in their loneliness. As the story progresses, however, their platonic friendship spills over and they begin to fall in love.

Their story unfolds in carefully controlled sequences that are almost dreamlike in nature as, together, they fabricate a fantasy world for themselves in which they pretend to be in love as their spouses are – and then continue, even when the façade of romantic affection becomes a reality. One of the most obvious visual cues in the mise-en-scène that indicate the portrayal of these moments is in the lighting. In all of these sequences, the lighting is more dramatic: it is low-key, sharp, and almost always artificial, as these scenes overwhelmingly take place under cover of night. This type of lighting is fundamental in setting the mood in these sequences; the subtle expression of emotion and the tension of physical bodies is highlighted, literally, by its use.

The first major sequence of this nature occurs before their relationship has strictly started but after they are both aware of each other. In this sequence, first Su and then Chow go out to get noodles. The entire scene appears in slow-motion, and the lighting is intensely more dramatic than perhaps any other scene in the film up to this point. It takes place at night, so the only light comes from street lamps; overwhelmingly the world is dominated by shadow. As both characters go up and down the stairs to the noodle stall, we see both their physical figures, in sharp silhouette, and their shadows, on the wall descending with them; this adds an air of intrigue and, it could be even said, mystery to the scene. In this world of shadows, without the light of day, everything is a little more uncertain; the shadows serve as a lingering presence of the characters even when they themselves are no longer visible in the frame, and that presence is tense, tangible, fleeting.

In the sequence we see first Su as she goes down and up the stairs –

and then later Chow –

And then, at the culmination of the sequence, we see them both on the stairs at once, meeting as Su ascends and Chow descends, and the tension of both of them at once in a space previously inhabited by just one of them is heightened still more by the lighting, and the fact that we can essentially only see the outline of their frames in silhouette – close, almost touching, like two shadows meshing together on the same expanse of wall. We become, in this fleeting moment, hyper-aware of the possibility of contact, of their silhouetted bodies touching. In the world of shadow, they are the only things moving – dark forms, graced by light.

A second sequence occurs a few minutes later, again with them going to the noodle stand. This scene is similarly lit in artificial, sharp lighting, and similarly serves to heighten dramatic tension.

Here are two still frames of first Chow and then Su from the same sequence:

The lighting on Su’s face is sharper and a little brighter, but the lighting on Chow is still sharp enough that his face, hand, cigarette, and collar pop most, and everything else recedes into shadow; similarly, Su’s profile is what pops most immediately in the second frame. It is also interesting to note that their profiles mirror one another.

The next sequence in their constructed reality is the most direct one thus far, by far – they dine together in a restaurant. In this scene, dominated by middle shots and close-ups, the lighting is again artificial and sharp, coming primarily from the point source of a single lamp hanging over their table at the restaurant. It beautifully highlights their faces, capturing subtle, subtle expressions of emotion, minute twitches of facial muscle, fluttering eyelashes, stuttered breath. It also works wonders for capturing Chow’s cigarette smoke.

This sequence, like most of the other sequences of their constructed reality in the film, feels almost noir with its air of dramatically-lit, subtle intrigue. Chow’s smoking adds to this; it feels suave, sexy, backlit and tinged with the dark, rich red of the seats around them – but if this scene were lit differently the effect would be entirely different. It is the sharp lighting that creates such a powerful atmosphere of mystery, tension, and drama.

The next sequence of this kind begins with this frame:

Everything about this shot is utterly stunning. The light on Su’s face is perhaps the most dramatic in the entire film: bright, sharp, highlighting the shadows under her cheekbones and her winged eyeliner, and also very artificially coloured, almost golden, making her lipstick look brighter and her features more defined. Chow is behind her, in a different depth of field; still, we can tell that his gaze is on her, and the resultant tension is incredible. (If there was a visual climax of the film, I would say it’s right here: this moment, more than any, captures the drama, the tension, the subtle intrigue, the possibility of hidden feeling, the hint of passion – and visually, it is incredibly beautiful.)

Later, a scene between them betrays a slightly different feeling, but still heightened by the effects of lighting. In this scene they are in the rain, having a conversation about the beginnings of their relationship. This sequence is less cinematically dramatic; singularly, there is no music playing, and they are holding a regular conversation instead of moving in slow-motion like two shadows on the verge of touching. It begins with Chow running towards Su in the rain, in an echo of an earlier scene:

The two proceed to have perhaps the most honest conversation that takes place over the course of the entire duration of the film. Here we see their fantasy reality of romance being acknowledged directly – a break from tradition – but lighting still serves to heighten the sense of tension and emotion in the scene.

The light is a dull colour, a soft blue or grey, and more diffuse than it has been previously. In many ways it’s a visual cue that this scene, that the events transpiring between them now, are different than they have been in the past. It is still dark enough that it could be night and there is still sharp lighting on their faces from a streetlight somewhere – but the shadows are no longer as deep, as the barriers between their pretended reality and actual reality break down.

A final scene between them shows them saying good-bye to one another for a final time – or, as we later realise, rehearsing saying good-bye.

Here the light is once again very dramatic in its sharpness and the dramatic and physical tension it provides. The above frame is particularly poignant because of the shadows present. The single thrown by Chow is lonely and stark against the wall, and also carries narrative significance because it is alone, not accompanied by Su’s shadow – as they are parting. But what is perhaps even more poignant is the shadows of bars that are cast over the characters, because they can be read to have a metaphorical significance: bound by societal convention and scrutiny of neighbours – imprisoned by convention and expectation – Su and Chow must always be secretive and must now even say good-bye (or prepare to) in secrecy.

The illusion dissolves in the next moments of the scene as we realise that this good-bye was only a rehearsal – but the lighting remains the same. In this part of the scene it serves to heighten the emotional distress of the characters, as Su weeps in Chow’s arms. They are in a closer embrace than we have ever seen them in before, so much of the physical tension is (finally!) abated, but the emotional intensity remains. Su finally dissolves, in the first time we have seen her lose composure so openly, and Chow, in contrast, visibly struggles to remain stoic.

In conclusion, the lighting in the sequences that catalogue the progression of Su and Chow’s relationship is cleverly used to heighten dramatic, narrative, and physical tension; it highlights undercurrents of uncertainty, hesitation, and occasionally sensuality that emotionally charge their interactions, and it allows us as viewers to better see the subtle expressivity of their faces. With this lighting, the tangibility of their interactions becomes at once more fleeting and more real; more satisfying and more infuriating: in these moments of touching or almost touching, the light throws everything into sharp contrast, into a dreamlike world of sharp light and slow, lurking shadow – a murky world in which one can easily fall in love in the shadows and under streetlamps – but also a world in which even silhouettes cast shadows, and the consequences of such actions cannot remain hidden forever.

Breaking the Glass: Engaging With Space in Playtime

June 10, 2015October 10, 2026intermechanismcontributor

by Julia
University of Chicago CMST 10100, Intro to Film
Spring 2015

Jacques Tati often liked to say that the only real star of his film Playtime (1967) was the set itself. With his brilliant manipulation of its mise en scène, those words hold to be quite true. The minimally dialogued, loosely plot-based film is mainly structured around the changing of settings. As the movie goes on, an apparent pattern emerges among the scenery—it almost entirely consists of grey, pristine buildings, from the steely Orly Airport to the shiny new Royal Garden restaurant. Tati establishes this foundation in order to build up and play with the dichotomy of public and private space. Throughout the film, he juxtaposes these two ideas and questions the boundary that divides them.

The only moment of private space we see in Playtime is when Monsieur Hulot’s acquaintance from the army invites him into his recently bought apartment. However, Tati takes this scene and challenges the extent to which the space could be deemed personal. First off, the design of the apartment complex remains consistent with the public buildings that we have previously seen—grid-like, silver, and clean-cut. In the below collage of the six main scenes in the movie, the apartment (middle picture of the top row) blends right in with the other buildings of this ultra-modern world. By making the aesthetics of families’ homes parallel that of public locations, the distinction between them becomes slightly blurred, for our expectations of how the two different spaces should look are challenged. Tati creates a disturbance in what we think we know—if we are not certain of how a private space should appear, do we even know how they function?

As the scene unfolds, Tati continues to blur the line by showing each apartment in the complex watching TV. With each group partaking in the same form of entertainment, it appears as if they are all involved in a public activity while in their supposedly private space. A connection is established between the apartments by cutting to a zoomed-out shot revealing all four apartments in the complex. Our eyes are drawn to Hulot and his friend by the high-key lighting used on them contrasted with the remainder of the frame in dim lighting. We then witness Hulot and his friend looking up at the ceiling, as if they are looking right at the couple in the room above them. This first moment of play between the different apartments foreshadows the extended gag that is to come.

Tati sets up the gag with two establishing shots: one angled so we can see the room with Hulot and his friend in full view, and another angled shot so we then get to see the apartment to the right of them. In doing this, it is pointed out to us that the televisions of both rooms share the same wall. The camera cuts again to focus on both rooms straight on, making them appear as if the two rooms are looking at each other. Tati then plays with this illusion, first having it look like the left room is watching the right room, with the reactions of the left timed perfectly so it seems as if they are responding to what is occurring in the room next door rather than the television. When the woman touches the man’s bruised nose, the people in the left room immediately yelp and cringe.

The gag continues in this way, such as when the man on the right begins taking off his work clothes and the parents in the left room subsequently tell their daughter to leave the room. By blending the activities of the two rooms, Tati emphasizes the overlap in what each room is doing, and thus questions their use of private space.

Other aspects of this scene further address the question, such as the choice of stationing the camera outside of the apartment complex. It is as if the viewer is respecting the privacy of the home, for we cannot hear the dialogue inside. Instead, we just overhear conversations of passersby since they are walking in a public area.

And yet at the same time the privacy of the space is still uncertain, considering we can still see everything that is happening inside the rooms due to the big glass windows. Even an entire group of American tourists was able to gaze into the apartment as they passed by on their bus. This scene in Playtime addressed how we define private space and whether it is all that different from the area of the public.

The exploration of this concept continues into the scene of The Royal Garden restaurant. At this point, Tati begins to demonstrate various attempts of creating a private space within the public realm in an effort to draw attention to the arbitrariness of these distinctions. We see this being played out with the role of the doorman. Since the restaurant can only accept a certain amount of people, the doorman controls the flow of people and who is let in. However, this exclusivity is completely illusory—a physical barrier of glass is the only thing preventing the general public from entering the restaurant. When Hulot accidentally shatters this glass door, there is no longer any obligation to acknowledge the nonexistent boundary.

This point is further emphasized when a man drunkenly walks straight through the “door” and into the restaurant, despite the doorman’s efforts at creating an illusion of the door still existing. The restaurant’s attempt at privatizing a public space ended up failing, for the line that divides the two realms is not easily maintainable since the line itself is fairly ambiguous.

Another example of an endeavor of creating privacy in the public is when the American businessman, Mr. Schultz, tries to create a “VIP” area inside the restaurant by only allowing people with the chair imprint on their back into the space. Tati calls attention to the absurdity of the concept of a privatized VIP space in a public restaurant. He demonstrates this with Mr. Schultz’s humorous judgment on who makes the cut and who does not. The silly requirement that Mr. Schultz enforces pokes fun at exclusivity and what defines it. The absurdity is further exaggerated due to his chosen place, which is definitely not a VIP area. It merely consists of a corner of the restaurant that was deconstructed by the rowdy dinner guests. The blown fuse is the finishing touch for this exclusive space of the elite.

Playtime puts to question the definitions of public and private, and how they restrict the two from blending into one another. Tati challenges these restrictions by organizing humorous situations and playing around with space—both the concept of it and its physical makeup. Through this film, he teases people’s attempts at imposing distinctions between public and private spaces while at the same time distorting those divisions. Jacques Tati pulls off making a joke of this idea while he playing around with innumerable gags in this delightfully whimsical and charming film.

Dressing up for Noodles: Costume Design in In the Mood for Love

June 3, 2015October 10, 2026intermechanismcontributor

by Wei Yi
University of Chicago CMST 10100, Intro to Film
Spring 2015

In the Mood for Love (2000) is a beautiful study in restraint. Set in 1960s Hong Kong, the film details the intimate relationship that develops between two lonely neighbours, Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung). Neglected and later betrayed by their spouses, they foster a special kinship which social mores dictate must be concealed. This is a society that operates not by brute force but by much more subtle ways; through its institutions, through the eyes and ears of one’s neighbors, through the personal values individuals feel compelled to uphold, and the dark desires they actively repress.

The restraint demonstrated by the characters, who are far too disciplined and respectful to enact any sort of revenge or vent their passions, is echoed by the understated nature of storytelling. Wong Kar Wai capitalizes on the cramped living spaces in Hong Kong, which erode the boundaries between social and private life, to create tension that drives the narrative – it is much harder to keep secrets when your neighbors live so close to you. This in turn shapes the way the narrative is told: since most of the dialogue is either vague or dishonest, the truth must be told another way. I wish to analyze how costume design contributes to the film’s overarching narrative and themes, often filling audiences in on what is left unspoken. The costumes are an outward manifestation of characters’ internalization of the gaze of others – of social responsibility and convention. From Su Li-zhen’s cheongsams to Chow Mo-wan’s suits, characters wear a uniform that projects how they wish to be seen by others. But we see that costumes also betray the secrets people keep.

The devil in the details

While pursuing the suspicion that her husband and Chow’s wife are having an affair, Su Li-zhen facilitates the infidelity of her boss. In one scene, she informs him that his wife will be at the restaurant at 5.30pm, and hands him a gift from his mistress. Presumably the gift is a tie, because Su Li-zhen casually remarks on it when she returns from getting him coffee:

Later, she catches him as he leaves the office to have dinner with his wife:

In other words, the new tie might have exposed his affair to his wife. This scene hints to us how Su Li-zhen discovered her husband’s infidelity, which is confirmed later in the film. This scene is also significant because it signals to audiences that there is intentionality on the filmmakers’ part in such minor costume details as the choice of tie for a certain actor in a certain scene – you notice things if you pay attention.

The infidelity of Su Li-zhen’s boss is employed as a parallel to the affair between her husband and Chow’s wife, often used to foreshadow the realization of the latter. Earlier in the film, Su Li-zhen asks her husband to bring back two handbags from Japan for her boss, one for his wife and one for his mistress:

Later in the movie, Chow asks where he can purchase her handbag for his wife:

She would mind, because she knows what it means to have the same handbag as the woman who lives next door, and to see their husbands wearing the exact same tie. Chow knows too; in this scene we discover that despite his verbal dismissals, he is not so naïve as to ignore the evidence before his eyes. He simply plays the fool before the eyes of others. Their astuteness becomes apparent; later on they use their attentiveness to detail to engineer a moment of deception, when Su Li-zhen changes into heels and leaves her slippers in Chow’s apartment to fool the landlords, who return home earlier than expected. The knowledge that any little detail could be used against you is perhaps why both of them take such great care with their own appearance.

Playing dress-up

This humorous remark by one of the landladies implies that Su Li-zhen’s commitment to her uniform of beautiful and restrictive cheongsams is distinctive not just to audiences, but to other characters as well. Su Li-zhen alternates between 21 cheongsams over the course of the film (though some of them only appear in one scene), and her wardrobe is one of the most visually arresting elements of In the Mood for Love. Here they are in order of appearance:

Given that the film returns to the same few interior or nighttime sets (the apartments, their offices, the noodle stand, the corridor) again and again, Su Li-zhen’s changing dresses help indicate to us the passage of time. Often they complement the rest of the mise-en-scène, such as this instance where yellow flowers in the room are echoed by her dress:

Form-fitting and elaborate, with unusually high collars that can resemble a neck brace, Su Li-zhen’s cheongsams reflect how incredibly self-conscious she is about her image and the restrictions she places on herself in order to ensconce herself in Hong Kong society, especially compared to the more varied and Westernized attire of Chow’s wife. The uniformity of her appearance means that deviations from trend are significant. At a pivotal moment in the film, when visiting Chow after he has been missing for several days, she dons a red coat. The feelings she has for him, that she had previously suppressed, are finally revealed – she literally wears her heart on her sleeve.

Four years later, we note the plainness of her last two cheongsams relative to the others, the lower collar, and a new hairstyle:

This is the last time we see her. The intertitle immediately preceding this shot reads: “That era has passed. Nothing that belonged to it exists anymore.” Su Li-zhen, by choosing to uphold her public status at the expense of her personal feelings, is able to reintegrate back into society and move into a new stage of her life: motherhood. We have traced the evolution of a character in the way she dresses.

We can do the same for Chow Mo-wan. His uniform consists of a suit and tie, hair slicked back and neatly parted, and an opaquely polite smile:

Like Su Li-zhen, Chow is also very conscious of external chatter, and he is as reticent in private as he is among his neighbors. In a rare moment, we see Chow in a singlet reading a letter from his wife, who is in Japan with Su Li-zhen’s husband. He crumples up the letter and shuts the door on the camera:

As a storyteller, Wong Kar Wai is insistently indirect; often the camera seems to be just outside the locus of activity, like a voyeur peering into the private lives of these individuals. Audiences, too, are implicated in the intrusiveness of the public eye.

Gossip and unrequited love drive Chow away from his apartment to Room 2046. When seeing Su Li-zhen out after her visit, we notice that his normally perfectly gelled hair is partially undone:

Given that at no other point has he had a single hair out of place, we can infer that this is a deliberate costuming decision. The internal conflict between his personal desires and his social obligation as a married man has caused him to come undone. Chow cuts himself off from society – he even stops going to work – and eventually leaves Hong Kong entirely, retreating to Singapore. Since he cannot reconcile his public and private lives, he chooses instead to live in exile, only returning years later.

As long as you both shall live

In the Mood for Love is about a love story that never happened. We observe that the relationship between Su Li-zhen and Chow Mo-wan, flush with emotion and possibility, remains unfulfilled within a society that conspires to keep them apart. Yet we also observe the agency by which they determine this outcome. Just as their spouses decide to defy the promises they made in marriage, Su Li-zhen and Chow Mo-wan actively chose to terminate their relationship. The institution of marriage casts a heavy shadow over the actions of these characters, and it is visually depicted in the multiple close-ups on wedding rings we see throughout the film:

Notably, rings are always shown worn on the hand, never removed from it. When the relationship between spouses begins to break down, the rings that once signified a great love become a reminder of a social obligation, an observed and observable commitment. They are therefore tied to image, reputation, integrity – socially determined characteristics. Unwilling to relinquish the moral high ground to their cheating spouses, the bond between Su Li-zhen and Chow Mo-wan ultimately becomes a secret whispered into the hole of a tree: an unrealised wish, a blurred memory.