Happy Together (1997)

Wong Kar-Wai has already established himself as one of the most talented filmmakers working in Hong Kong cinema, and, indeed, the world. In his latest film, Happy Together, he recounts the story of two gay lovers, played brilliantly by Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung. As usual, the storyline in the film is rather sparse, which does nothing to detract from the final product. The beauty of Happy Together lies in Wong Kar-Wai and cinematographer Christopher Doyle's unsurpassed ability to simulate a specific mood through film. In Happy Together, the filmmakers continue their trademark visual style, consisting heavily on strobe, slow-motion, wide-angle lenses, and jump-cuts. For the first time in Wong Kar-Wai's career, he mixes black and white with color film, creating a complex web of flashbacks. The color, especially, seems to almost jump out from the screen. The music, taken from tango album 'The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night', by Astor Piazzola, beautifully excentuates the lingering feelings for a lover gone. Happy Together marks another point in Wong Kar-Wai's maturity as a director. Each one of his films surpasses those previous to it.

Fmovies: "Happy Together " is essentially a study of a couple falling in and out of love. Their sex - they are a gay couple from Hong Kong - hardly matters: the film could just as well have been about a straight or lesbian couple. The fact that very near the beginning there is as explicit a scene of male anal intercourse as one is likely to encounter in mainstream commercial cinema is far from gratuitously sensational. As the film is meant to start on a passionate high, this is the most convincing way of doing it - so be it. The director has the integrity not to repeat this for the reason that the couple never quite feel the same about each other again - indeed there is a great deal of alienation. Both have arrived in Argentina in search of work. Although the jobs undertaken by one of the pair, Lai, are fairly menial, first as a doorman at a Tango club and then a kitchen worker, he seems more stable than his companion, Ho, who does little but hustle, gets beaten up fairly early on and spends much of his time in an incapacitated state. In the room they share there is a lampshade depicting the Izuazi Falls. The cascade almost becomes a symbol for the relationship they would ideally like to achieve. Early on they hire a car to look for it but lose their way. After their relationship has finally broken Lai finds it, but as he is alone, the landmark seems sadly lacking in excitement. There is a third main character, a straight guy from Taiwan, who works in the kitchen with Lai. With his amiable self-sufficiency he seems to have been introduced to provide a balance to the angst of the main pair, a device that works well as it reinforces our sympathy for them. "Happy Together" looks rough and crude. A hand held camera is used with frenetic nervousness. Sequences of monochrome alternate with scenes that are almost perversely over-coloured. I know it is fashionable to give some films a nightmarish look. Here I found it a distinct stumbling block to be got over for the sake of a work that says so much about loneliness, homesickness and the struggle of people simply to be "happy together".

Happy Together is a throbbing, raw, and profoundly nostalgic lament from two displaced traveling Chinamen yearning for emotional soundness, for their homeland, and for each other. Wong doesn't front us any of the flickering that can still be struck between lovers who fight all the time. There is no deep poetic interpretation of the story itself, but by leaving so much unsaid, writer-director Wong Kar-Wai doesn't make the misstep of suffocating his characters' relationship with trite soap dialogue. That is not to say, however, that the film even remotely knows the meaning of the phrase "less is more."

You don't watch this film as much as seize on to it. Letting it yank you every which way is a raucous yet intriguing excursion, with fertile visual stylizations that trail you long after seeing the film, all with the impact to communicate directly with the heart. The visuals make the film come alive, and make material the displacement, and thus the unhinging, that the main characters feel from their surroundings and each other. Rather than using dialogue, this highly stylized romance chiefly imparts its themes and moods through its images, and Wong fashions an interior audiovisual composition about the mood swings of a love affair. Wong's use of images for purely emotional photogenic value, feverish camera movements, jukebox soundtrack and his improvisation and experimentation with the actors have an effect reminiscent of Scorsese's Mean Streets. In Wong's emotional roller coaster of a film, the characters seem to have a formidable intuitive certainty that their relationship is star- crossed sooner or later, but they follow passionate impulses regardless, giving the film a dreamy texture that it can't shake as its lovers turn-step to and fro during their free-form Argentine spree.

Wong gradually layers the relationship, just like it would happen in real life, and the doubts and obscurities are constant. He extracts powerful performances from his lead actors. While Leslie Cheung gracefully fluctuates his moments between yearning, resentment, and anger, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai is the calm eye of the storm.

Leung acts from the inside. We intuit his feelings through his natural physical subtleties, chiefly through the sensitive eyes. Even purely physical scenes, like the fights he has with Leslie Cheung's character, don't happen suddenly. Leung winds up for these moments instinctively and then defensively underplays them. And when the tears come, they pour without affectation, making me wonder from what part of Leung's soul he quietly unearths these moments from as Wong rolls the camera.

Happy Together fmovies. I didn't think so the first time I saw HAPPY TOGETHER, but I really think this film is a masterpiece. Technically it's amazing - the hand-held camera-work is incredible, and the mindbending shifts from saturated colors to monochrome (which I first felt was a stylish stunt) really underscores the loneliness and alienation of the characters brilliantly - the overall effect by the films' end is devastating.

HAPPY TOGETHER was apparently also - at least partially - inspired by the Argentine novelist Manuel Puig, author of 'Kiss Of The Spider Woman' among many other novels, and Puig's fiction tackles similar issues in a similarly fractured style (filled with footnotes, digressions and sudden shifts in perspective), all to incredibly powerful emotional effect.

If HAPPY TOGETHER is something of an homage to Puig, it's a great one. On it's own it's also a devastating portrait of a disintegrating relationship.

Something of an obvious precursor to the subsequent masterpiece In the Mood for Love (2000); Happy Together (1997) is a tragic love story by way of recollection. If you're at all familiar with the work of director Wong Kar-Wai - from his breakthrough film Days of Being Wild (1991), to his more recent masterwork, the unsung 2046 (2004) - then you'll be accustomed to his personal approach to cinema; from that continually drifting sense of quiet melancholy and disconnected ennui - all captured by a roving camera that conspires to alienate characters from one another by intrusive shot composition and naturalist production design - and a beguiling approach to the concept of time continually abstracted in order to create drama from moments of fond reminisce. Once again, the feeling expressed in Happy Together is that of loneliness and despair, as characters drift spectre-like through desolate cities attempting to cling to moments and memories as if gasping for their final breath; and all the while distorted by a frequently hypnotic approach to music, structure, pace and cinematography.

If the film lacks the sophistication of the aforementioned In the Mood for Love, it is only because the process of refinement has replaced the edginess and earthiness of this film, with a studied, technical grandeur and ornate beauty that is really quite transcendent. Nonetheless, the style and tone of Happy Together fits the mood of the film perfectly; capturing the feckless uncertainly of the character's lives - both together and apart - and concurrently suggesting the idea of memory and repetition that plays an important role in the way the narrative ultimately plays out. The first viewing might very well be confusing, with scenes occurring that seem to simultaneously represent both the past and the present, and with information presented in a series of incredibly quick cuts, disconnected voice-over and a continually jarring cross-cutting back and forth between lurid colour and an oddly tinted monochrome, which seems to work on an emotional level, as opposed to any kind of narrative convention.

That said, the grittiness of the film suggests an uncompromising and starkly unconventional beauty in keeping with the film's central relationship; with the violent and volatile shifts in stock capturing the same unpredictable impulses and urges of the central characters as they fight, break-up, reconcile and drift apart against a rolling backdrop of exotic and atmospheric locations. The use of Buenos Aires as the central setting adds texture to the film, and the vibrant way in which the director captures the strange, mysterious and nocturnal atmosphere of the city is evocative to say the least. Here, the rhythm of the film becomes tuned to that of the Argentine tango that swirls through the bar where the characters rediscover one another; with the staccato rhythms of the movement underscored by the sad reflections of the accordion music and the stampeding percussion of feet against floors, combined with continual hints of tortured romanticism - touching without feeling, sensing without sensuality, etc - that are so central to these characters and the odd situation they find themselves in.

The location also ties in with the filmmaker's fondness for the work of author Manuel Puig; whose style of writing has some influence on the tone and languid energy of the film in question, with Wong and his crew - and in particular cinematographer Christopher Doyle - expressing certain unspoken facets of this relationship through fra

In "Happy Together" Director Wong Kar Wai tells us the story of a relationship that does not survive the alienation inside and outside.

The film is set in Argentina where two lovers are stranded because they don't have enough money to return to their native Hong Kong.

The film shows us that Fai and Po-wing are unable to find equality or balance in their relationship. It is a story about the way most relationships are defined by the balance of power.. and how this leads to despair. Fai reflects that their relationship was the happiest when Po-wing was ill and had to be cared for like a child. As Po Wing's health improves Fai draws away from him and refuses his attempts of closeness, illustrated by the constant battles over couch and bed. When Po-Wing is well enough to go out again by himself the balance of the power in relationship shifts. Po-wing slowly but surely slips away into the world of hustling. He never finds his way back to Fai who eventually saves enough money to go home.

Both are emotionally devastated by the loss of their lover. We only see them being happy together in a glimpse, as they dance a slow dance together in their room. It seems the happiness in their relationship that Fai refers to in connection with Po-Wing's illness, is an isolated kind of happiness that he himself enjoys without Po-wing's knowledge. If they are ever indeed Happy Together we see it only in facial expressions, in their tone of voice but these are expressions of love and tenderness that never seem to reach the surface that remain unspoken.

Wong Kar Wai's visual style is absolutely stunning. He conveys the alienation inside the relationship - and the alienation outside - (I am referring to the fact that they are in a different country) through colors and camera-movements. We are constantly looking at the protagonists from a corner high above or through the window of a seedy bar. Every single shot feels claustrophobic and it irritates the viewer. It makes the viewer long for closeness and clarity. It imitates the longing of the characters and their attempts - and failure - at connecting to each other. Their feelings, as does the eye of the lens, float above them in a silent, detached loneliness.

"Happy Together" is one of those films that I do not really enjoy watching. It is actually physically painful to watch because it hurts the eye as much as it hurts the soul. The film makes its style and subject matter into one flesh, a "happy" marriage of form and content.

9/10