Happy Together (1997)

never happy, never together

if there's ever been a better work of art - movie, novel, opera, video game - about what it's like to be lonely and in love and out of place all at the same time, i'd like to know about it. If there's ever been a film made in color where the cinematography does a better job of telling the story, i'd like to know about it. beautiful, sad, tawdry, exciting, and very very moving. It almost seems incidental, or obvious, or distracting, to add that it's the best gay film ever made. January 21, 2008

Bittersweet Love Story Applies to Everyone

I am a new fan of director Wong Kar-Wai movies. Happy Together is one of my favorites. When I watched the movie for the first time, I did so with no prior knowledge of the film other than it was a love story between two men. If you're over 30, you have probably lived this story. You may have been Ho Po Wing (Leslie Cheung) or you may have been Lai Yiu Fai (Tony Leung), but you have undoubtedly been involved in a romance much like the one portrayed in this movie.

Happy Together has nothing to do with being gay. It has everything to do with love, loss, regret and emotional growth. I saw myself in both Po Wing's character and Yiu Fai's character. In many ways, I felt my life was being shown in this movie. I have loved men who hurt me and emotionally abused me, but I couldn't say no when asked to "start again." Conversely, I have callously mistreated some very nice guys just because it was so easy to do it. And, just like Po Wing, I cried with regret when I realized what I had thrown away.

You can read a lot of deep meaning into this movie, but ultimately it is a love story which is all too familiar to the majority of us. If it is hard to watch, it is because we see ourselves in the characters onscreen. It shouldn't be because the characters are two men. Love is love.

Leslie Cheung is both hateful and sympathetic. He is mesmermizing onscreen. Tony Leung is, for the most part, very convincing as Po Wing's long-suffering lover, although I did feel Leung was somewhat uncomfortable in some of his scenes. Still, it didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the film. My favorite scene in the movie is a flashback of Po Wing and Yiu Fai dancing in the kitchen. It isn't erotic. They are simply holding each other and moving to the music. I felt it conveyed their love for each other more than any other moment in the movie.

Although this movie can be enjoyed on many levels, I choose to view it as a love story that each of us has experienced some time in our life. It is bittersweet realism. October 3, 2007

Unpractised, Imaginary Tango

I just saw this film for the third time, and have completely revised my perspective of how I see this; a completely invigorating experience, and so much that I was forced to write about it here and now.

Much of the criticism toward this film is that it is aimless and pondering, and even with the visual glory and elegance, remains distant and without a real center. I've seen this twice before tonight, and have been practically frustrated with exact the same reasons - I've had a Ho Po-wing/Lai Yiu-fai relationship with this film, every time willing start again just because I hope to find out that value that I, for my own sake, hope is there. Just returned from the cinema, and I think I've finally found it.

My problem with the aimlessness exists because Wong usually, even when he impressionistically improvises and creates the mood of the film as he goes along, does invent coherent and well-focused visual narratives: "In the Mood for Love" is gloriously tight-focused, the visual tone poem weaving out a cyclical narrative, reaching its peak in "2046". I know the logical predecessor is a wholly different film altogether, but I place this as the apprentice film in relation to "Mood", in much the same way as we tend to see "Kagemusha" to "Ran". Even more appropriate would be "Chungking" to "Ashes of Time" (which is even referred to in dialogue). Here the focus is simply all over the place, and the visual flair anticipates much of what was to become the epitome of romance and love depicted in cinematic terms three years later. But it is exactly this factor that opened a new door for me.

The words you hear time and again, "I think we should start all over again", is a step in appreciating the whole narrative construction: when the two men break up and start again, we literally start again by being put to the beginning of a long visual phrase, each time with slight variation: it's like being treated the same short story all over again, with slightly different dynamics and focus. And if you look beneath the surface, you can see the personal dynamics shifting, roles changing: Lai becomes Ho eventually, followed by the narcism yet also with determined self-consciousness, and the other way around. Watch how the dynamics start going backwards when Lai and his pals are playing football and he is smoking a cigarette to the music of Frank Zappa, and recall a counterpart for it in the scene where Ho is sitting in the taxi and smoking a cigarette to the same song. I think that the ambivalence of the sex scenes underlines this point. Wong even has, in the very beginning, our eye moving from a brief glimpse of Lai's passport, the introduction of his identity, to what? The two have sex, and you can draw all sorts of psychological connections at your will.

And then there is all that is visual. I mentioned that I have been troubled by this film because the visual perspectives (different styles, uses of colour) hardly seem to mesh as you would expect if you come from "Days of Being Wild" or "In The Mood For Love" - even the exuberant "Fallen Angels". Instead of introspection as in the "Mood", we have a vision that explodes to all directions at once; we have the repetitive element here as well, but instead of going inward, giving focus, it goes even further in visual distance. But what I at long last understood tonight is that it is not a flaw: instead it is a conscious effort to find circumference, not in trying to control but to channel energy; there is a different set of dynamics at work here: just compare how Wong shoots the couple in the backseat of the cab here and three years later; the context is almost identical, yet our eye keeps its distance. The contrast is even more striking when here we have an explicit presence of sex and lust as what in a Freudian way shapes the personalities of our main characters, but also that of the camera, and in "Mood" we have no sexual reference at all between our main characters. Enriches both films, I think.

Wong is ingenius in creating a rhythmic flow, and here his use of Piazzolla, the most erotically vibrant tangos I know, not only adds to the subcontext, it annotates the head structure: just think of this film as the two men practising tango, each time having to start over: this film as seen from the slopes of Iguazu Falls; this film as a remembrance whispered to a tape recorder, being played in the Lighthouse Island, remembering the past in the place where you become one with it; letting go of the past, not by evading but by greeting it. Just as Wong has said about this film in an interview (found on the Asia Studios website): "...to me, happy together can apply to two persons or apply to a person and his past, and I think sometimes when a person is at peace with himself and his past, I think it is the beginning of a relationship which can be happy, and also he can be more open to more possibilities in the future with other people."

Completely worth every second of it.

With best regards,
Antti September 24, 2007

Great movie, but it's cut

For me personally "Happy Together" is one of the best asian and one of the best lovemovies ever made. Sure, if you don't like or hate gay people, this is not your movie....I am not homosexual, but the way Wong-Kar Wai shows the relationship between these two guys, is very intimate and i think, it has something for gay and not-gay people.

The sad thing is, there is over one minute missing in the US-DVD! I own the HK-DVD and there you can see a really cool black and white scene with the two fantastic tango-dancers and also a scene, where Tony Leung buys something to drink+eat...whatever. It may sound not so special, but i think it's always bad, when there's something cut. That's why i give this DVD "only" 4 stars. By the way, the picture and the sound quality are really good. March 26, 2007

Hints of Treasures to Come

Two Chinese lovers drift around Buenos Aires, attempting to come to grips with a relationship that is clearly on the skids in this interesting and frustrating film `Cheun gwong tsa sit' (Happy Together) by the very talented Kar Wai Wong. On vacation from Hong Kong, Yiu-Fai (Tony Leung ) and Po-Wing (Leslie Cheung) are presented in an obviously unhappy state, but we are not privy to the cause of their unhappiness. Yes, there is infidelity, there are outside attractions, and all of the `things' that could create this state, but we are left to look at this sad young couple as a metaphor for the struggles in emotions and loves that so often surface in a dying relationship, not only in the gay relationship we are seeing but in straight relationships as well. The universals hold true.

Kar Wai Wong loves the non-linear approach to story telling and in this early film the method of his direction feels a bit too disjointed, too uninvolved in the character development. Not that the actors do not render fine performances: both Leung and Cheung give brave portrayals of lost souls and we cannot help but care for both of them. And the remainder of the cast is on target (Chen Chang and Gregory Dayton).

What holds the little hints of greatness that were to come (this film dates back to 1997) is suggested in the lighting and camera work, both of which provide as major a role in the film as the actors and chaotic storyline. The unity of mood and story is solidly at one in this little film, showing us just how creative the writer director was to become. Grady Harp, August 06 August 10, 2006

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