In the Mood for Love ending explained

What happens

Chow leaves for Singapore, and the two never come together. Years later he visits Angkor Wat and whispers his secret into a hollow in a wall, then seals it in. The love stays unspoken, and only memory is left of it.

The last image

At Angkor Wat, Chow whispers into a hole in an ancient wall and seals it, burying his secret.

What it says

The whisper shows a feeling with nowhere to go but into stone. The film has been about restraint all along, so it ends with the unsaid kept unsaid, and the past remembered rather than reclaimed.