These last few years I’ve been jumping around the World of Wong Kar-wai so I think a little bit of context helps for Happy Together. In 1994, while working on the epic Ashes of Time, Wong took a break and made Chungking Express to clear his head and fall in love with filmmaking again and it ended up being a huge hit and made him an international darling. The next year, he followed that up with the stylistically similar Fallen Angels, which further earned him widespread recognition. Both movies were heavily influenced by the looming handover of Hong Kong to China, so when his next film, Happy Together, was slated to be released just weeks before the handover, everyone expected this would be what it was about. And they were sort of right, it’s just almost entirely set in Buenos Aires.
Ho Po-Wing (Leslie Cheung) and Lai Yiu-Fai (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) are a couple from Hong Kong who go on vacation together to Argentina seemingly without a plan or even a return ticket. They buy a broken down car and, inspired by a lamp that I must now find a replica of, try to visit the Iguazu Falls, the largest waterfalls in the world (and a place that I would also really like to go to). They don’t make it, instead getting lost and running out of money. They break up, and, some time later, Fai has a crappy apartment in Buenos Aires and works as a doorman at a tango bar, trying his best to save up enough to fly home. Po-Wing prostitutes himself to men in that scene, so Fai sees him around sometimes and openly resents him for leaving him in this predicament. One night, Po-Wing shows up at Fai’s door having been severely beaten by one of his johns. Fai cares for Po-Wing’s injuries, allowing him to move in and rekindling their relationship.
I should say that Happy Together shifts from black and white to color around this time, but don’t get it twisted, the title is definitely ironic. Our central couple may be back together, but the problems are still there – Fai is suspicious of Po-Wing and Po-Wing is restless and equally frustrated with Fai. Fai secretly attacks the man who hurt Po-Wing and loses his job for it. He finds work at a Chinese restaurant where he meets a cute, straight Taiwanese boy named Chang (Chang Chen from A Brighter Summer Day and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) who, like Fai, has family waiting for him back home and is trying to save up money for travel. Unlike Fai, Chang is upbeat, due to him actually having a good relationship with his family, and is traveling merely because he wants to see the world. We have the beginnings of a love triangle, and, I mean, what did you expect, it’s Wong Kar-wai. The guy hasn’t met a story he can’t make actually about longing.
Argentina is on the opposite side of the world from Hong Kong; it’s 11 hours behind, so when it’s morning in Buenos Aires its night in Hong Kong. So you could say for our two leads, the world has been turned upside down, in a sense. Sort of like how a lot of people felt about the handover of Hong Kong! Fai struggles with finding a way to reconcile with his father, which certainly could represent how modern Hong Kong felt uncertain about having run away and returned to China. And then there’s the Chang of it all – another young man with similar problems but who is thriving – representing Taiwan and its more mature, fractured relationship with China. On top of that all is Wong’s decision to make this a movie about a gay romance, something that was controversial even in Hong Kong at that time, where its marketing faced some censorship ahead of release. It’s hard to resist reading into Wong having made a movie about two gay exiles, but the director himself insists that’s not worth obsessing about, Happy Together is a movie about universal themes.
Which is fair, as fun as it is to try to unpack this movie as a metaphor, you totally don’t have to. Happy Together also works purely on the surface level as a story about two lovers who are drawn to each other but also a terrible couple. Which isn’t fun but it’s still Wong Kar-wai working with cinematographer Christopher Doyle in just the noisiest video you’ll ever see. Criterion’s website described the picture as “luminous monochrome and luscious saturated color” and what more do you need meet to tell you to sell you on getting this 4K disc? If I’m building a Mt. Rushmore of Wong Kar-wai, Happy Together is comfortably up there with Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love. Oh wait, there’s four heads up on that stupid hill in South Dakota… I guess check in next year as I continue to audition candidates for this metaphorical monument.