SCENES FROM AN ENDING

Painter Varad Bang's homage to Wong Kar-wai's cult film In the Mood for Love, in an ongoing exhibition at Delhi's Gallery Pristine Contemporary, is an interesting curation of heartbreak

- PARAMITA GHOSH

AUTEUR Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love is about a great love and a great loss. The couple in the film is Mr Chow, a journalist with slicked-back hair and sad eyes, and Mrs Chan, a secretary in stylish and fitted cheongsam dresses. The two meet across a passageway in a cramped apartment building in British Hong Kong of the 1960s; the day they both happen to move in; they eventually get curious about each other—something that is helped by the constant absence of their respective spouses.

With time, they realize that their partners are having an affair—Mrs Chow with Mr Chan—but by then their own relationship, packed with silences, glances, things said and unsaid, is seen moving, scene by scene, into their little bubble. Till things fall apart. The couple is cast in red as they come together to work on a script and there's a capture of the first stirrings of desire; the scenes are awash in green as their feelings develop and they acknowledge it; shades of yellow tinge the scenes of looking back. Young artist Varad Bang was mesmerized by the "painterliness" of these scenes.

Inspired by the film, Bang's paintings draw on the film, a treat for the eyes, and create the scenes anew in light and shadow, through selected interiors reminiscent of Vermeer—the Dutch painter is also an inspiration—and Wong Kar-wai's dimly lit Hong Kongscapes, but that could recall an urban setting anywhere where, due to lack of time, moments of connection are rare, or fleeting, or cut short. Those paintings are currently hung at Delhi's Pristine Gallery, in an exhibition titled 'The Weight of Love' till May 11.

Starting out