Picks and Pans Review: Heady in a More Literal Sense Too, Since Mood Tells of An Adultery That Fundamentally Remains a Chaste Dream. Moving into a Cramped Apartment Building on the Same Day in 1962, a Journalist and a Secretary Become Next-Door Neighbors.

By Leah Rozen

UPDATED 02/12/2001 at 01:00 AM EST • Originally published 02/12/2001 at 01:00 AM EST

open sky.

Mood should not be mistaken for a (subtitled) Asian take on Brief Encounter, the weepy 1945 classic about two family-bound adulterers in the British suburbs. Here the affair (and the movie with it) eventually grows more tenuous and mysterious, and the lovers' reticence finally begins to seem not so much noble as irrational. An audience is left bothered and bewildered—but mostly bewitched. (PG-13)

Bottom Line: Mood enhancer