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Happy Together
1997 - Hong Kong - 105 min. - Feature,
Color and B&W
| AKA |
Cheun Gwong Tsa Sit (Cantonese title) |
| Genre/Type |
Romance, Drama, Romantic Drama, Gay &
Lesbian Films |
| Keywords |
Argentina, assault,
prostitute/prostitution, seduction, friendship, homosexual,
loneliness, love, relationship, romance, break-up [romantic],
gay-bashing |
| Themes |
Self-Destructive Romance, Looking For
Love, Breakups and Divorces, Fish Out of Water, Prostitutes |
| Tones |
Stylized, Lyrical, Elegiac,
Melancholy, Enigmatic, Quirky |
| Set In |
Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina |
 Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai directs the strange, intimate drama
Cheun Gwong Tsa Sit (Happy Together). Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle employed multiple film speeds and different color film stock during the shooting. Ho (Leslie Cheung) and Lai (Tony Leung) are lovers from Hong Kong who have run away to live in Buenas Aires, Argentina. However, Ho is immature and unwilling to settle down, which makes Lai depressed. When they break up, Lai works as a doorman in a tango bar in order to save money and go home. The restless Ho becomes a prostitute. After Ho is beaten and injured in an attack, Lai takes him to his apartment to recover. Ho tries to rekindle the romance, but Lai isn't interested. He leaves the tango bar and works in a kitchen, where he meets the young Chang (Chang Chen) from Taiwan.
Wong Kar-wai at his most lyrical and mannered, Happy
Together is a voluptuously photographed meditation on love and
loneliness. Employing the same off-the-cuff direction and dazzling
visual style of his landmark Chungking Express (thanks to ace
cinematographer Christopher Doyle), Wong gives Happy Together a
similarly loose structure, though it is a darker, more melancholy
film. Like characters in a Samuel Beckett play, the Hong Kongese gay
couple stranded far from their native land and at the end of their
rope recognizes the destructive, ultimately doomed nature of their
relationship, but they cannot quite bring themselves to break their
bonds. Happy Together gained notoriety for its frank portrayal of
homosexuality, resulting in its getting banned in Singapore, among
other places. Though this long taboo subject was slowly being broached
by such art house directors as Tsai Ming-liang and Stanley Kwan, few
films dealt with Chinese male sexuality as directly (and as
graphically) as Wong did here. Both male leads, Leslie Cheung and the
sad-eyed Tony Leung Chiu Wai, give brilliant, fearless performances.
Happy Together is an utterly romantic, deeply moving film that
continues to haunt the viewer long after the credits have rolled.
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CREDITED CAST: |
| Leslie Cheung |
Ho Po-wing |
| Tony Leung Chiu-Wai |
Lai Yiu-fai |
| Chang Chen |
Chang |
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