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Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia

About the Conditions of Possibility of the Philosophical Analysis of Films: A Kierkegaardian, Girardian, and Deleuzian Reading of "In the Mood for Love" Author(s): JEAN-YVES HEURTEBISE Source: Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, T. 69, Fasc. 3/4 (2013), pp. 451-469 Published by: Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23785874 Accessed: 28-11-2018 19:07 UTC

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About the Conditions of Possibility of the Philosophical Analysis of Films:

A Kierkegaardian, Girardian, and Deleuzian Reading of In the Mood for Love

JEAN-YVES HEURTEBISE*

Resumo

A problemática na relaçâo entre Filosofía e Cinema dá origem a duas questôes: a primeira, sobre as condiçôes que os filmes têm de satisfazer a fim de poderem ser devidamente tratados por urna compreensáo filosófica; a segunda, sobre os requisitos, que os discursos sobre os filmes têm de satisfazer, em ordem a serem legítimamente considerados como filosóficos. Respondendo à primeira pergunta, através de urna análise ao debate entre Paisley Livingston e Aaron Smuts, acerca da "Filosofía do Cinema", será afirmado que, embora os filmes em si mesmos nâo façam filosofía, é possível fazer filosofía a partir deles, desde que estes expressem ideias estéticas. Respondendo à segunda questáo, através da leitura crítica de Days of Being Wild, In the Mood of Love e 2046 de Wong Kar-wai, com referência aos conceitos de Kierkegaard, Girard e Deleuze, será argumentado que urna análise filosófica implica a renovaçâo de conceitos filosóficos centrais e o alargamento da compreensáo da natureza das imagens cinematográficas.

Palavras-chave : Deleuze, emoçâo-imagem, filosofía do cinema, Kierkegaard, repetiçâo, Wong Kar-wai

Abstract

The problem of the relationships between Philosophy and Films raises two questions: first, the conditions that films have to fulfill in order to be rightly concerned by a philosophical understanding; second the requirements that discourses about films have to fulfill in order to be truly considered as philosophical ones. Answering to the first question through a survey of the debate between Paisley Livingston and Aaron Smuts about "Film-Philosophy", I will affirm that, though films in themselves are not doing philosophy, it is possible to do philosophy out of them provided they express aesthetical ideas. Answering to the second question through a critical reading of Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love, and 2046 referring to the concepts of Kierkegaard, Girard and Deleuze, I will argue that a philosophical analysis implies to renew core philosophical concepts and to extend our understanding of the nature of cinematographic images.

Keywords : Deleuze, film-philosophy, image-emotion, Kierkegaard, répétition, Wong Kar-wai

* Centre d'Epistémologie et d'Ergologie Comparative, CEPERC-CNRS UMR 7034, Aix-Marseille Université, France. Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, National Dong Hua University, Taiwan, [email protected]

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452 Jean-Yves Heurtebise

I Resolving the methodological issue of Film as Philosophy

n his article on Kracauer's "Theory on Films"1 published in The British Journal of Aesthetics in 1974, Jerome Stonlitz sets high standards for film criticism, blaming

[...] the critical transvaluation on which a movie is so bad that it is, somehow, good; the despairing disregard of aesthetical value in favor of sociological examination; the isolated shot or vignette which, if it does not redeem everything, at least counts, if only by contrast, for almost everything.2

For him, art criticism should elabórate on films nurtured by aesthetical qualities in order to avoid being trapped in the sociological analysis of the mass-consumption cultural producís named movies. Moreover, if it is true that "films cling to the surface of things" as Stonlitz pointed out Kracauer said, then the whole enterprise of interpreting movies by the means of philosophical concepts could appear dubious, illegitimate and self-contradictory.

This paper will aim at resolving this theoretical challenge by inquiring into the conditions of possibility of the philosophical analysis of films. Assessing the condition of possibility of a philosophical analysis of films implies: first, to determine the conditions that films have to fulfill in order to be worth of philosophical attention; second, to define the conditions that discourses about films have to meet to belong to philosophy. As Stanley Cavell said, some cinematographic works are worth thinking about.3 Not every film is open to philosophical interprétation and not every analysis of film is a philosophical one. Thus the problem is to know

1. Kracauer, Siegfried - Theory of Film: The Rédemption of Physical Reality. London: Oxford University Press, 1960.

2. Stonlitz, Jerome - "Kracauer: Thing, World and Interiority in the Movies". The British Journal of Aesthetics, 14 (4), 1974, pp. 351-367.

3. Cavell, Stanley - The World Viewed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 163-4: "[...] some [movies] are worth thinking and writing about, with the same seriousness that any work of art deserves [...] not alone implies a commitment to specify the grounds of worth in particular cases, but [also] implies that not all movies are in fact worth this attention and that there is next to no agreement among those who speak of movies over the canon of movies to which their speaking must be accountable and by which standards are thus far set against which to weigh worth; nor over the cinematic grounds there may be in terms of which to argue worth or worthlessness."

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About the Conditions of Possibility of the Philosophical Analysis of Films 453

how to assess the potential "philosophical" value of a film and of a critic of a film.4

In order to answer the first question of the philosophical value of films, I will refer to the debate between Paisley Livingston and Aaron Smuts about Philosophy in Films: I will contend that if philosophical analysis can be rightly involved in the understanding of films (a contrario to Livingstones claim), it doesn't mean that films are doing philosophy (a contrario to Smuts claim), it only implies that films are freely playing with non-conceptual ideas whose aesthetical value are worth philosophical attention.

In order to answer to the second question of the conceptual value of discourses about films, I will provide a reading of Wong Kar-wai s "trilogy of love" (Days of Being Wild, 1990; In the Mood for Love, 2000; and 2046, 2004) based on the philosophies of René Girard, Kierkegaard, and Gilles Deleuze respectively, and their conceptualization of the notion of Répétition.

Finally, the problem of the relationships between Philosophy and Films will be addressed with reference to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze: for Deleuze, the common point between doing philosophy and making films is that the two activities are based on human creativity.5 For a film to be artistic and for a critique of a film to be philosophical, they have both to produce a différence, to disclose singular novelty: a film will be said to be valuable when it is creative enough to force the critic to produce new concepts.

1. To what conditions a film is "worth philosophize about"?

The question of the nature of the relationship between Cinema and Philosophy received opposite answers from Paisley Livingston6 and Aaron Smuts.7 The limits of their opposite interprétations will be demonstrated by the recourse to Kants and Deleuze s aesthetics.

4. Wartenberg, Thomas E. - Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2007, p. 3: "Sure it makes sense to hold that an art film like Rashomon and an independent feature like Crime and Misdemeanors actually focus on philosophical concerns, for these films are regarded as the works of auteurs, directors who think of themselves as artists and who have a great of control of the production process of making their films. But what about a Hollywood film like Blade Runner?"

5. Deleuze, Gilles - "Having an Idea on Cinema", trans, by Kaufman, Eleanor -Deleuze and Guattari, edited by Kaufman, Eleanor & Heller, Kevin Jon. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988, pp. 14-20: "philosophy is a discipline that is just as creative and inventive as any other discipline, and it entails creating or even inventing concepts."

6. LrviNGSTON, Paisley - "Theses on Cinema as Philosophy". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64 (1), 2006, pp. 11-18

7. Aaron Smuts, "Film as Philosophy: In Defense of a Bold Thesis". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 67 (4 ), 2009, 409-420.

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Paisley Livingstone contradicted the assumption that "films can make creative contributions to philosophical knowledge, and this by means exclusive to the cinematic medium": film cannot do philosophy; at best, they can illustrate some philosophical ideas, already enounced by past philosophers. For Livingstone, there is a gap

[...] between the cinema's various pedagogically useful illustrations or évocations of previously published philosophical reasonings, and the bold claim that in its ineffable, exclusively cinematic form of expression, some work of cinema has significantly advanced philosophical knowledge in a way supporting some suitably strong version of the cinema as philosophy thesis.

Livingstone not only affirmed that cinema cannot make a spécifie contribution to philosophy, but he also contended that art criticism does not need philosophy to support its aesthetical inquiries: "Attentive critical appréciation of a particular work of art rarely requires the importation of the requisite philosophical background with its complex array of terms, positions, arguments (and, at times, formal notations)." However if we can admit that films are not doing philosophy, it seems harder to accept that we cannot draw philosophy out of them, that a philosophical reading of film cannot bring a décisive contribution to their aesthetical analysis.

In order to promote the idea of "film as philosophy" against Livingstone's criticisms of this claim, Aaron Smuts drew a distinction between "the bold thesis" he supports, assuming that "film could make a philosophical contribution through means exclusive to cinema", and a "super bold thesis" he criticizes, defending "the unique philosophical abilities of the cinematic art form". For Aaron Smuts, Gilles Deleuze's works are the best example of this latter thesis: "Gilles Deleuze is concerned with whether film has unique abilities to alter the ways in which we conceptualize time and movement, a process that is philosophical in an expansive sense of the term." It should be noted that Aaron Smuts seems to misunderstand Gilles Deleuze's perception of cinema. Deleuze didn't say that Cinema has unique abilities to alter the ways in which we conceptualize time and movement but that films give unique occasions for the philosopher to transform his concepts of time and movement - a very different notion. Not only does Gilles Deleuze not defend the super bold thesis of philosophy specifically in films, but even the bold thesis that some films be specifically philosophical seems contradictory with Deleuze's conceptions of films and art. Moreover, even the humble thesis of a philosophy of films is rejected by Deleuze. Philosophy has not to reflect on

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About the Conditions of Possihility of the Philosophical Analysis of Films 455

movies; movies are not philosophical and do not philosophize.8 Contrarily to what Smuts said about Deleuze, the process by which movies explore blocks of movement/duration is not philosophical in any ("extended" or not) sense of the term: the altération of our ways to perceive time and movement is specifically an artistic opération made by Cinema. However, because it is uniquely artistic, and at the condition it is really creative, philosophy can explore what this aesthetical practice can mean for its own philosophical practice. As Deleuze put it in the last sentences of his two-volume study on Cinema: "Cinema itself is a new practice of images and signs, whose theory philosophy must produce as conceptual practice."9

In Aaron Smuts' article Eisensteins October and an episode of The Twilight Zone ("The Little People", William E Claxton, 1962) are equally said to "do philosophy" while Rohmer's My Night at Maud's is not ("the philosophical contribution it makes, if any, is not what we are looking for"). If Aaron Smuts' criterion ("a film could make a philosophical contribution through means exclusive to cinema") works with October, however what is so "specifically cinematographic" in "The Little People" and so un-cinematographic about My Night at Maud's remains unclear. For example, to dismiss "long shots without camera movement" as un-cinematographic is quite problématic (Why reduce cinema to the expression of movement only? What about the capture of time?) and perhaps rather ethnocentric: Ozu's "still-life" shots are among the most beautiful cinematographic images, conveying both philosophical meaning10 and narrative purposes.11 In analyzing the famous "For God and Country" sequence of Eisensteins

8. Deleuze, Gilles - "Having an Idea on Cinema", cit., pp. 14-20: "I say that I do philo sophy, which is to say I try to invent concepts. What if I say, to you who do cinema: what do you do? What you invent is not concepts - which are not your concern - but blocks of movements-duration."

9. Deleuze, Gilles - Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Tomlinson, Hugh & Galeta, Robert. London: The Athlone Press, 2000, p. 280.

10. Ishaghpour, Youssef -Formes de l'impermanence: le style de Yasujiro Ozu. Paris: YellowNow, 1994.

11. Sultani, Aaron - Camera-cut-composition: a leaming model. London: Rosemont Publishing, 1995, p. 44: "The importance of these character révélations is stylistically supported by the inclusions of still-life shots to denote a change in dramatic évolution of two scenes; it is further dramatize in his codas as the camera holds on a shot of an apparently insignificant detail in the character's home or external environment - a vase, a desert street corner, a coal burning plant - signaling its relevance as a symbolic leitmotif distilling the spiritual key to a film. Characterized as 'curtain shots' by Tadao Sato owing to their ceremonial, theatrical allusiveness and as 'pillow shots' by Noël Burch for suspending the natural progression of the dialogue, setting and plot, they mark a sudden elucidation of the drama, altering the weight in the rhythmic, compositional, and dramatic indexing in the distribution and duration of shots."

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456 Jean-Yves Heurtebise

October, Aaron Smuts affirms that its philosophical value comes from the fact that the montage works like a philosophical argument. The cinematic connection established between religion and civil violence refers to a philosophical idea. However, what makes it belonging to Art is the feeling of outrage that Eisenstein wanted ail spectators to share and that he genially conveyed through montage. It is not convincing as a philosophical argument but powerful as an aesthetic émotion. The capacity of aesthetic ideas to illustrate ideas of reason doesn't imply that the work of art conveying them is doing philosophy.

In order to fully understand that point it is helpful to go back to Kant s aesthetics and his définition of aesthetic ideas:

[...] by an aesthetic idea I mean a présentation of the imagination which prompts much thought, but to which no determínate thought whatsoever, i.e. no [determínate] concept can be adequate, so that no language can express it completely and allow us to grasp it.12

Art is the form of the expression of Ideas without Concepts. It follows from this proposition applied to the understanding of Cinema, that to speak about philosophy in films is basically to make confusion between a determínate expression of Ideas through the catégories of understanding and an indeterminate expression of Ideas through the free relation between the faculties of understanding and imagination. Attentive critical attention to films requires philosophy to extend and renew our aesthetical understanding (as Aaron Smuts rightly contend against Paisley Livingstone) but it doesn't imply that "philosophy" itself is involved in the film-making process (as Aaron Smuts assumed). Movies cannot do philosophy because they are not dealing with concepts. However the fact that movies are not dealing with concepts does not mean that they are deprived of ideas. Through Cinema, ideas lose their conceptual form to become part of the aesthetic experience of free play of représentations.13 This specifically cinematographic free play of représentations conveys philosophical ideas deprived of conceptual forms:

In experiencing films, people solve philosophical problems without thinking about them, thereby accomplishing what some philosophical

12. Kant, Immanuel - Critique of Judgment, trans. Pluhar, Werner S. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987, p. 182.

13. Ibidem p. 183: "Spirit in an aesthetic sense is the animating principie in the mind. But what this principie uses to anímate [or quicken] the soul, the material it employs for this, is what imparts to the mental powers a purposive momentum, i.e. imparts to them a play which is such that it sustains itself on its own and even strengthens the power of such plays."

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About the Conditions of Possibility of the Philosophical Analysis of Films 457

théories do not [...] Professional philosophers cannot help being fascinated by the spectacle of ordinary people playfully accomplishing what the philosophers theorize about.14

However, this cognitive process of free play of représentations operating in films is not enough to assert the aesthetical value of this film: it dépends on what kind of représentations films are playing with. When these représentations are nothing hut clichés, the film playing with clichés will be an entertaining movie more or less deprived of aesthetical value and not really worthy of philosophical analysis (though it is always possible to proceed to such analysis on such movies). Only when a work of art is playing with aesthetical ideas the power of imagination is triggered and reason is brought into movement. Therefore, for a movie to be open to philosophical analysis dépends neither on its philosophical "content" nor on the philosophical "intention" of its director but simply on its aesthetic value. Disclosing the aesthetical ideas of the film through concepts is what philosophical analysis of film is about.

2. Under what conditions is a discourse about films

is a philosophical one?

In the first part of this paper, I contended that the possibility for a movie to be susceptible of philosophical analysis dépends neither on its philosophical "content", nor on the philosophical "intention" of its director, but on its aesthetical value. In this second part of this paper I will affirm that the condition of possibility of a philosophical understanding of a film lies in the viewers capacity to be as creative in the conceptual field as the movie was creative in the aesthetical field.15 To illustrate this

point, I will refer to Wong Kar-wai's "trilogy of love": Days of Being Wild, 1990; In the Mood for Love, 2000; and 2046, 2004. Focusing especially on the second of the three opuses, I will make reference to the philosophies of Kierkegaard, René Girard and Gilles Deleuze to give a conceptual meaning to the aesthetical ideas of these films. On this basis, a triple "sociological", "existentialist" and "metaphysical" interprétation of In the Mood for Love will be proposed to explore the different layers of the articulation between Love and Répétition in Wong Kar-wai's three movies.

14. Jarvie, Ian Charles - Philosophy of the Film: Epistemology, Ontology, Aesthetics. Oxon: Routledge, 1987, p. 31.

15. Deleuze, Gilles - Cinema 2: The Time-Image, ed. cit., p. 280: "Cinema's concepts are not given in cinema. And yet they are cinema's concepts, and not theory about cinema."

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2.1. In the Mood for Love in a "sociological" and Girardian perspective

Born in 1958, Wong Kar-wai is a Hong-Kong film director who became locally famous with highly stylized movies illustrating the underground life of Hong-Kong in films like 4s Tears Go By (1998), Chunking Express ( 1994) and Fallen Angels ( 1995). In the Mood for Love (2000), a commercial and critical success, constitutes the apex of Wong Kar-wai s œuvre.

The plot of the movie is quite trivial and could be summarized in one sentence:16 a platonic relationship between two people living on the same floor, both betrayed by their respective husband and wife. On this simple canvas, Wong Kar-wai paints a complex picture with a sense of aesthetics both in the photography and editing which gives the movie its place as a masterpiece in Film history. Yet the virtuosity of Wang Kar-wai's direction could mislead us to think that here the form is more important than the content.17 Moreover, it will leads us to overcome the importance of the political and social background, always present in Wong Kar-wai's movies: "The key thematic concerns of Chungking Express are an exploration of personal isolation in urban society, the impossibility of love and the effects of time and memory."18 The isolation of individuals in urban contemporary Asian societies, the compression of the feelings in stretching times and narrow spaces, is also what Wong Kar-wai wanted to disclose through In the Mood for Love as he stressed in an interview.19 Thus the absence of privacy currently in Hong-Kong, at the same time, stimulâtes the desire of interactions and increases the possibilities of control. This opacity and the rather oppressive feeling of lacking space is formally transcribed on the screen with numerous shots of tight corridors, narrow stairs, spaces obstructed by half-closed windows, curtains and doors: "The film gets

16. Jousse, Thierry - Wong Kar-wai. Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma, 2006.

17. Dancyger, Ken - The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2007, pp. 186-190.

18. Brown, Andrew M. J. - "Directing Hong-Kong: the political cinema of John Woo and Wong Kar-wai". In: Political Communications in Greater China: The construction and reflection of Identity, ed. Rawnsley, Gary D. & Rawnsely, Ming Yeh T. New York: Routledge, 2003, pp. 215-35.

19. Teo, Stephen - "Wong Kar-wai s In the Mood for Love: Like a Ritual in Transfigured Time". Senses of Cinema. [Access 25 Aug. 2011]. Available in WWW <URL :http://www. sensesofcinema.eom/2001/13/wong-kar-wai/mood//>: "I was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong the year I was five (around 1963). For me it was a veiy memorable time. In those days, the housing problems were such that you'd have two or three families living under the same roof, and they'd have to share the kitchen and toilets, even their privacy. I wanted to make a film about those days and I wanted to go back to that period."

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About the Conditions of Possibility of the Philosophical Analysis of Films 459

directly at the feeling of always putting up a good front, of being on guard against disappointing people, by isolating small physical events in corridors, tiny rooms, restaurants, offices, and street corners".20 The love story between Mr. Chow Mo-Wan (played by Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan or Su Li-zhen (played by Maggie Cheung), both of whom have been married and betrayed, takes place in a spécifie social environment and a spécifie historical time: "in the world of 1962 Hong Kong, which is so overcrowded that people rent out rooms in their apartments, to middle-class couples, where the old folks watch the younger ones like hawks with culturally ordained authority, appearances are all important".21

Two characters in the movie exemplify this conservative social pressure: Su Li-zhen's landlord (Mrs Suen played by Rebecca Pan) and Su Li-zhen's boss (Mr. Ho played by Lai Chen) for whom she serves as a secretary. The landlord, Mrs. Suen, seems to keep watch over Su Li-zhen, making several comments on her behavior: her dresses are too sophisticated to go buy dumplings at the shop around the corner; she shouldn't let her husband go on business trips too often; she shouldn't come back home so late, etc. Mrs Suen wants to notify Su Li-zhen that her behavior is slightly out of line and the cruelty of these remarks comes from the fact that Su Li-zhen is blamed for her husband's faults. Mr. Ho is the second character

who embodies the conservative morality of traditional (Chinese) society and expresses its darker side with the différences of treatment regarding male and female behavior: the adultery of the manager, whose very secretary (Su Li-zhen herself) comes to schedule, as a part of her daily job, the divided agenda between his wife and his concubine, contrasts deeply with the secrecy and suspicion that hangs over Su Li-zhen's deeds and gestures.

Other signs of the political and social background of this love movie can be traced. First the Chinese title of In the Mood for Love, i.e. Hua Yang Nian Hua is a quote from the title of a famous song of Zhou Xuan that describes the happy remembrance of time spent between husband and wife suddenly shadowed by the Japanese occupation of the "solitary island". Here again love and politics are intertwined. More subtly, featuring the footage of Charles De Gaulle's visit in Cambodia strongly binds with the film and the évolution of the romance. This excerpt, inserted near the end of the movie, can be interpreted as a political metaphor of the social changes expressed by the caption "times have changed". Looking back into

20. Jones, Kent - Physical Evidences: Selected Film Criticism. Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2007, p. 62.

21. Ibidem.

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history, it appears that the visit of De Gaulle in Cambodia was a pretext to deliver a speech for the self-determination of peoples and nations against the US War in Vietnam and its imperialist aims. From this perspective, the changes that occurred in society during the sixties represent a shift from an asymmetrie and unequal kind of relationships between men and women in society, and between rich and poor countries in the world, to relationships based on reciprocity and stratégies of constructive identities. In this context, the social oppression defining at the same time the conditions of possibility of the love story and its failure seems to have receded: at the end of the movie, the presence of an unmarried woman with one child is accepted by the neighbor. "Times have changed".

The importance of the social and political background in the movie reminds us that in the définition of love political and social médiations matter: médiation is foundational to the relation, even if the romantic définition of love is based on the feeling of immediacy. As René Girard showed22 the illusion of romanticism consists of the belief that a love

story concerns only two persons but the truth novéis underline is that the relations between the two lovers dépend on their relations to a third element. There is no immediacy in love but only médiation and this relation of médiation is supported by a mimetic desire: "On Girard's account, we do not desire spontaneously, but according to another person: we imítate the Other s desire. Desire does not have its origin in the self or in the object but in the third party. Put another way: there is always a level of social médiation between my desire and its object."23

2.2. In the Mood for Love in an "existentialist"

and Kierkegaardian perspective

In order to understand what can be learned from the movie about us, in a phenomenological perspective, I will refer to Kierkegaard. The reason for this reference to Kierkegaard's philosophy to understand what In the Mood for Love is that love is a central concept in his work. It is the motor of the dialectic process of being reunited with ourselves, through the link to someone else: "Does he actually love the girl, or is she not once again simply the occasion that sets him in motion? [...] The split in him caused

22. Girard, René - Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. Freccer, Y. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965.

23. Girard, René - Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953-2005, ed. Doran, Robert. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008, p. xv.

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by his contact with her would be reconciled by his actually having returned to her."24

Referring to Kierkegaard's philosophy will prove to be useful for reframing the aesthetic ideas expressed in In the Mood for Love inside the whole "trilogy" of Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love and 2046. These three movies take place in Hong-Kong (but also in Macao, Singapore and the Philippines) during the sixties. In Days of Being Wild, Su Li-zhen falls in love on 16 April 1960 with the golden boy and gigolo Yuddi and, in the last minute of the movie, Cho Mo-wan suits himself up as another golden boy in the room of the hotel in the Philippines. In In the Mood for Love, in 1962, Su Li-zhen and Cho Mo-wan, now married, fall in love after their respective husband and wife had together an adulterous liaison in Japan. At the end of the movie, both of them divorced from their adultérine partners but failed to live together: Su Li-zhen stays alone with their child and Cho Mo-wan stays alone with his memories. In 2046, in 1966, Cho Mo-wan becomes a gigolo, apparently unable to love (despite the strong feeling of Bai Ling, played by Zhang Ziyi, living precisely in the room 2046 of another hotel), and is haunted by the memory of Su Li-zhen, which he tries to eternalize through the writing of a science-fiction erotic novel named 2046.

I propose to interpret these three films in the framework of the three stages of love in Kierkegaard's philosophy: the aesthetical stage, the ethical stage and the religious stage. Thus the trilogy Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love and 2046 is not only the chronological progression of the same story; more deeply, it involves an exploration of the three levels of time: Days of Being Wild explores the present (habits); In the Mood for Love the past (memory) and 2046 the future (promise). In Days of Being Wild, the main character is a Don Juan, the symbol of the aesthetical stage embodied by Johannes the Seducer in Kierkegaard's philosophy, whose religion is féminine beauty. However the succession of féminine conquest hides a deep anxiety regarding existence and a feeling of vanity based on a lack of something that grounds him into life ("it is manifest that every aesthetic view of life is despair").25 In In the Mood for Love, the main character experiments the ethical stage of love. In Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, this ethical stage is represented by the tragic character of Agamemnon who has to sacrifice his daughter for the sake of the community. Similarly,

24. Kierkegaard, S0ren - Répétition. In: Kierkegaard's Writings, vol. 6, transi. Hong, H. V. & Hong, E. V. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983, p. 185.

25. Kierkegaard, Soren - Either/Or II. In: Kierkegaard's Writings, vol. 4, trans. Hong, H. V. & Hong, E. V. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, p. 192.

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in In the Mood for Love, the lovers resign their love to obey the social norm. Finally, 2046 could be seen as the ironie and paradoxical expression of the metaphysical stage of love: the world of 2046 represents the existence after life in a strange paradise where houris are replaced by androids.

In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard gives the example of Abraham to express the différence between ethical and religious matters:26 the sacrifice of his daughter by Agamemnon was granted to the social community (symbolizing the sacrifice of the individual to social norms) but the sacrifice of his son by Abraham, symbolizing the prevalence of the individual to the general in its direct relation to the universal, is a sacrifice granted to God, and for this very reason eventually halted by the Deity itself. This framework could be used to interpret the last sequence of In the Mood for Love. At the end of the movie, Cho Mo-wan seals his secret love in a hole of Angkor Vat Temples decayed walls. By this gesture he bids farewell to his love, sacrifices his own deep and sustained feeling for Su Li-zhen. If it is true that In the Mood for Love takes place itself inside the scope of the ethical stage, then the interprétation of the last sequence of In the Mood for Love could be that the sacrifice of love Cho Mo-wan agrees to do is on a par with the sacrifice of Agamemnon and not to the like of Abraham s one. Similarly to Agamemnon's one, Cho Mo-wan s sacrifice is not only social and mundane (caused by ethical conventions), but also irremediable and unfair: nothing is given back.

On the contrary, 2046 expresses the religious stage of love: in 2046, Cho Mo-wan has already decided not to love anymore, the sacrifice is done and as a resuit the character will, apparently cruelly, deny the love offered to him by Bai Ling. But this rebuke doesn't come from the heartlessness and cynicism one could expect from such golden boy. Indeed while the character refuses to be personally involved in love, he will help love grow between the daughter of his landlord and her Japanese lover (whom her father loathes) by secretly forwarding their love letters. Thus Cho Mo-wan refuses to love anymore without hating love itself. For this renouncement, something back will be given. Abrahams case, a ram was substituted to the child; in Cho Mo-wans case a book is given back for his sacrifice. By becoming the writer of a science-fiction erotic novel, he transfigures his love into eternity. Truly, there is something deeply ironie in Cho Mo-wan's appearance in 2046 being the holder of the religious stage of life and love. The irony here is that the character of Cho Mo-wan seems vety

26. Clair, André - "La pensée éthique de Kierkegaard: l'articulation entre norme et décision". Kairos, 10, 1997, pp. 65-84.

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About the Conditions of Possibility of the Philosophical Analysis of Films 463

close to the character of Yuddi in Days of Being Wild; both of them seem to be playboys, moving from partner to partner in an unconscious way. However, this paradox is perfectly consistent with Kierkegaard's concept of irony that implies that the knight of faith will eventually be indiscernible from the layman.27 Yuddi in Days of Being Wild and Cho Mo-wan in 2046 share a striking resemblance to the immature and irresponsible libertine gigolo. And it is true that Cho Mo-wan didn't care anymore of the social pressure that put an end to his love for Su Li-zhen: but the résignation of Yuddi about his own love and his own past became in Cho Mo-wan's heart, faith to the eternal nature of love represented by the world of 2046 which he créâtes and in which female androids repeat for eternity the feeling aroused by their former living counterpart. Becoming a writer even while continuing to act as a playboy, Cho-Mo-wan ironically performs the metaphysical "leap" to Kierkegaard's religious stage.

2.3. In the Mood for Love in a "metaphysical" and Deleuzian perspective

After having provided a "sociological" and "existentialist" interprétation of In the Mood for Love and 2046 with reference to Girard's and Kierkegaard's philosophies, a "metaphysical" interprétation will be proposed by referring to Deleuze's three syntheses of time and répétition:

The first synthesis, that of habit, constituted time as a living present by means of a passive foundation on which past and future depended. The second synthesis, that of memory, constituted a time as a pure past, from the point of view of a ground which causes the passing of one present and the arrivai of another. In the third synthesis, however, the present is no more than an actor, an author, an agent destined to be effaced; while the past is no more than a condition operating by default. The synthesis of time constitutes a future which affirms at once both the unconditioned character of the product in relation to the conditions of its production, and the independence of the work in relation to its author or actor. In these three syntheses, present, past and future are revealed as Répétition, but in very different modes. The present is the repeater, the past is répétition itself, but the future is that which is repeated.28

27. Kierkegaard, S0ren -Fearand Trembling, trans. Hannay, A. London: Penguin Books, 1985, p. 67.

28. Deleuze, Gilles - Différence and répétition, trans. Patton, Paul. London: The Athlone Press, 1994, p. 94.

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The different moments of the process through which Cho Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen fall in love in In the Mod for Love can be articulated with regard to these three levels of répétition.

The first level of répétition is the empirical répétition embodied in the present. It is expressed in the film by the fact that love is occurring to Cho Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen through the shift from eating alone Chinese meals in local shops to eat together in an expensive Western restaurant. According to Deleuze, through the passive process of converting the inorganic and organic components of food into the bodily structure of our soul, the subject constitutes its own self.29 Eating alone, we are contemplating ourselves. But through the ritual act of "eating together", the image of the other become an invariable part of the self-perception of ourselves. If love implies not being able to live without the presence of the other, it is because the other has become one essential element of the sum of habits composing one s own life.

The second moment of their love-story is structured by the imaginary répétition situated in the past. Their encounter is conditioned by past events and by the difficulty they face to let this past pass: their encounter was made possible by the adultery they both suffered from their respective husband and wife. But since they are both rejecting this common betrayal, they have no way to accept their present situation. They both claim: "We will never be like them." But by defining themselves as not being this other person (husband or wife), they fail to achieve the transition to the new person they are both becoming. Their will to not reproduce the former present of their adultérine partners constitutes the perspective through which they reflect the present present of their own unaccomplished relationship.30 But, at the same time, by reflecting on the way their respective partners may have met, they are projecting themselves in the imaginary past of ail possible loves: the réminiscence of their partners' encounter is creating the erotic condition of their meeting.31

29. Ibidem, p. 74: "We do not contémplate ourselves, but we exist only in contemplating - that is to say, in contracting that from which we come [...] There is a béatitude associated with passive synthesis, and we are ail Narcissus in virtue of the pleasure (auto-satisfaction) we experience in contemplating, even though we contémplate things quite apart from ourselves."

30. Ibidem, p. 81: "As a resuit, the active synthesis of memory may be regarded as the principie of représentation under this double aspect: reproduction of the former present and reflection of the present present."

31. Ibidem, p. 85: "The echo of the two presents forms only a persistent question, which unfolds within représentation like a field of problems, with the rigorous imperative to search, to respond, to résolve. However, the response always comes from elsewhere: every réminiscence, whether of a town or a woman, is erotic."

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The third moment of their love-story is defined by the symbolic répétition coming from the future. Deleuze defined it as such:

Répétition is a condition of action bef ore it is a concept of reflection. We produce something new only on condition that we repeat - once in the mode which constitutes the past, and once more in the present of metamorphosis. Moreover, what is produced, the absolutely new itself, is in turn nothing but répétition: the third répétition, this time by excess, the répétition of the future as eternal return.32

This third répétition relates to the most intriguing moments of In the Mood for Love. Three times Su Li-zhen and Cho Mo-wan are rehearsing - and each time, the spectator is misled. The first time, they repeat the imaginary scene of Su Li-zhen's husband seducing Cho Mo-wan's wife (the spectator is induced in thinking that they are really seducing each other). The second time, they rehearse Su Li-zhen's attempt to force her husband to confess his adultery (the spectator assumes that she is actually performing it, before realizing that Cho Mo-wan is playing the role of Su Li-zhen's husband). The last time, they are no more rehearsing past events but the event to come of their future séparation (the spectator is lead to think that this moment is presently occurring). Again, they fail to rehearse it properly it; obviously because they have already been subjected to the rule of love. Cho Mo-wan acknowledged it later on: "Now I know how everything began: before we can realize it, it is already done." Thus, in this process of repeating the past, they have created a future that is bigger than themselves, that is condemning them to stay outside of the eternal répétition of their love.

2.4. From interpreting movies through philosophy to extending philosophy with films

In the second part of this paper, we contended that the only way to express the aesthetical value of a film is to demónstrate the conceptual creativity of the philosophical analysis we provide on this film. Thus, if it is true, however interesting the reader may have found our Girardian, Kierkegaardian or Deleuzian interprétation of Wong Kar-wai's "trilogy", we have to recognize that it is not yet properly speaking a philosophical interprétation of these films since it is based on concepts and ideas already elaborated by past philosophers. Actually, film-philosophy should mean

32. Ibidem, p. 90.

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more than using philosophy to understand a film: it means to use a film to renew philosophy. Both Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze illustrated the specificity and difficulty of a truly philosophical understanding of movies: Cavell not only gave vivifying interprétations of classical Hollywood movies of remarriage but he extended our philosophical understanding of Emerson's philosophy and its links to American culture;33 Deleuze not only provided original comments on movies of Ozu, Welles or Godard, etc., but he also extended our philosophical understanding of Bergson s philosophy by proposing of new kind of Natürphilosophie based on Pierce s semiotics.34

Providing a truly philosophical reading of Wong kar-wai's trilogy implies to convey the ideas expressed in these films in a discourse that can be of interest for philosophy itself, i.e. to articúlate its aesthetical ideas to résolve a problem that is philosophical in nature. The philosophical problem that can be conveyed by these films is the problem of the nature of Love and Desire. In this perspective, the évolution of Cho Mo-wan in Wong Kar-wai's trilogy (from a womanizer gigolo to a romantic lover to an accomplished writer) could lead us to redefine the "conversion model" from René Girard's interprétation of Proust. For Girard, the lover has to renounce to his desire: "libération of desire" is the goal that writing is achieving.

Thus we have two perspectives in Proust and other great novéis of novelistic conversion. The first perspective is the deceptive perspective of desire, which is full of illusions regarding the possibility of the hero to fulfill himself through desire. It is the perspective that imprisoned him in a sterile process of jumping from one frustrated desire to the next over of period of many years [...] The second perspective is one that comes from the end of the novel, from the omega point of conversion, which is libération from desire. This perspective enables the novelist to rectify the illusions of the hero and provides him with the creative energy he needs to write the novel.35

The film, however, seems to call for another reading: if there is a process of libération operating in love, it is not a process of libération from love.

33. Rothman, William & Keane, Manan -Reading Cavell's The World Viewed: A Philo sophical Perspective on Film. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000, p. 27.

34. Sykes, Geoffrey "The images of film and the catégories of signs: Peirce and Deleuze on media". Semiótica, 176, 2009, pp. 65-81.

35. Girard, René - "Literature and Christianity: A Personal View". Philosophy and Literature, 23 (1), 1999, pp. 32-43.

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Girard's notion of Love as expressing "the libération of desire" hides and distorts what these films tell us in a non-conceptual way: "the desire of libération" expressed by love. Indeed Girard brought something important to philosophy when he said: "the impulse toward the object is ultimately an impulse toward the mediator"36. But we have to move a step forward and say: the impulse toward the object is ultimately an impulse toward the médiation itself. When relating to the one we love, we relate not only to an external empirical mediator but to the internai transcendental vector of the médiation. The goal is not to be freed from desire but to achieve an internai process of creative transformation37 induced by our contact with love.

If love is a liberating desire, it is because it has ultimately no actual object. In Répétition, Kierkegaard affirms: "in reality her existence or non existence was in a certain sense of no importance to him, only it was his melancholy that which found delight in rendering life enchanting to her".38 Love is the desire of a feeling (a mood for love). It could be sustained without his actual object but not without an image or a virtual object. As Deleuze said: "virtual objects exist only as fragments of themselves: they are found only as lost; they exist only as recovered".39 By renouncing to the actual per son he loved on a mundane level in In the Mood for Love, the lover is given back her virtual image "for ail times" in 2046.

In this sense, there is an analogy between the virtuality of love40 and the virtuality of the cinematographic image: both of them are mediators of desire. The cinematographic image médiates the relationship between us and the world as well as the virtual image of the beloved médiates the relationship between the lover and its actual object. This is why movies

36. Girard, René - Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, trans. Freccer, Y. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965, p. 10.

37. Carlisle, Clare - Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Becoming: Movements And Positions. New York: State University of New-York Press, p. 83: "In the case of Kierkegaard répétition, the 'reality' that it produces is inwardness - a reality that is profound and 'artistic' because its movement at once deepens the self and créâtes it anew."

38. Kierkegaard, Soren - Répétition. In: Kierkegaard's Writings, vol. 6, transi. Hong, H. V. & Hong, E. V. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983, p. 138.

39. Deleuze, Gilles -Différence and Répétition, trans. Patton, Paul. London: The Athlone Press, 1994, p. 102.

40. Schimmel, Annemarie - Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapell Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1975, p. 432: "eventually [Majnun] becomes so completely united with her that he is afraid of bloodletting because 'it may hurt Layla' when the needle touches his skin. This complete unification leads to an absolute isolation - he no longer wants to see her, because her corporeal appearance might disturb the absoluteness of his heart s vision."

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about love have a particular power to catalyze our love for movies and also why being in love gives to the lover the feeling of becoming the movie director of his world.

3. A creative reading of films' aesthetic ideas as the dual condition for Film-Philosophy

The problem of the relationships between Philosophy and Films raises two questions: first, the conditions that films have to fulfill in order to be rightly concerned by a philosophical understanding; second the requirements that discourses about films have to fulfill in order to be truly considered as philosophical ones.

Answering to the first question through a survey of the debate between Paisley Livingston and Aaron Smuts about "Film-Philosophy", I came to the conclusion that films in themselves are not doing philosophy though it is possible to do philosophy out of them. The condition for doing philosophy with films lies not in their philosophical content but in their aesthetical value. The aesthetical value of a film is defined by its capacity to express aesthetical ideas.

Answering to the second question through a critical reading of Wong Kar-wai s Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love, and 2046,1 came to the conclusion that a philosophical analysis of these films implies something more than referring to the concepts of Kierkegaard, René Girard or Gilles Deleuze; it asks for renewing core philosophical concepts and to relate this extended concepts to the spécifie the nature of the cinematographic image. Though films are not philosophical in themselves, they may provide new images of thought that can stir new thoughts about image in general and cinematographic images in particular: only if this dual condition is respected can cinema become artistic and its critic philosophical.

Thus I will conclude in saying that Wong Kar-wais films are symptomatic of the emergence of a new kind of image that, aft er Deleuze s Image-Mouvement*1 and Image-Temps,42 may be called Image-Emotion. For Deleuze the goal of movies in post-World War II Cinema was to re-establish our belief in the World.43 Spectator of the World, we can no

41. Deleuze, Gilles - L'Image mouvement Cinéma 1. Paris: Minuit, 1983. 42. Deleuze, Gilles - L'Image temps Cinéma 2. Paris: Minuit, 1985. 43. Deleuze, Gilles - Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. Tomlinson, Hugh & Galeta,

Robert. London: The Athlone Press, 2000, pp. 171-2: "The link between Man and the world is

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more act on it ("break-up of the sensory-motor link"); we can only believe to its existence. The challenge brought by the Image-Emotion is different. In a globalized and virtual world, the problem is to connect with another person. If we cannot act on the world, the solution is not to believe, even in this very world, but to find out, inside the net of distant and fluctuant relations and in a context of universal survey and control, a point of contact with another heart and mind.44

broken. Henceforth, this link must become an object of belief: it is the impossible which can only be restored within a faith. [...] Restoring our belief in the world - this is the power of modern cinema (when it stops being bad)."

44. Chow, Rey -Sentimental Fabulations, Contemporary Chinese Films: Attachment in the Age of Global Visibility (Film and Culture Series). New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

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