"In the Mood for Love" went through a long gestation period. In the 1990s, Wong Kar-wai found some commercial success, much critical acclaim, and wide influence on other filmmakers throughout Asia and the world with films such as "Chungking Express" and "Fallen Angels", both set in present-day Hong Kong. His 1997 film "Happy Together" was also successful internationally, winning him Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival and surprising many. It was even popular with mainstream audiences in Hong Kong, despite its then-unusual focus on a gay love story and its having been largely improvised in Argentina, a landscape unfamiliar to Wong. By the end of the decade, with sovereignty of Hong Kong transferred from Britain to the People's Republic of China, Wong was eager to work once more in the mainland, where he had been born. He had been dissatisfied with the final result of his 1994 wuxia epic "Ashes of Time", which was set in ancient times and filmed in remote desert regions, and decided to deal with a more 20th-century, urban setting.