Happy Together (film)
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| Happy Together | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Wong Kar-wai |
| Produced by | Chan Ye-cheng |
| Written by | Wong Kar-wai |
| Starring | Tony Leung Leslie Cheung Chang Chen |
| Distributed by | Kino International |
| Release date(s) | 1997 |
| Running time | 96 min |
| Language | Cantonese Mandarin Spanish |
| Budget | ??? |
| IMDb profile | |
Happy Together (Chinese: 春光乍泄; pinyin: chūn guāng zhà xiè) is a 1997 Hong Kong movie directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu Wai.
Wong Kar-wai interview excerpt:
- "In this film, some audiences will say that the title seems to be very cynical, because it is about two persons living together, and at the end, they are just separate. But 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." [1]
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[edit] Plot outline
A gay couple, Ho Po-Wing (Leslie Cheung) and Lai Yiu-fai (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) from pre-handover Hong Kong visits Argentina to renew their lagging relationship. One of their main goals here is to visit the Iguazu waterfalls which serve as a leitmotiv in the movie and represents their desire to revive the intensity of attraction they felt at the outset of their relationship.
Lai is the more stable and committed of the two, and desires nothing more than a fairly normal life. Unfortunately, Ho (typical of characters played by Leslie Cheung) has an extremely destructive personality and is not able to commit to a monogamous relationship. He picks up numerous other men, and even goes so far to bring them to the club that Lai works at. Eventually the two separate, and go their separate ways.
One day Ho Po-Wing turns up severely beaten at Lai Yiu-fai's apartment, who takes him in and begins to take care of him. Initially, Lai works hard to keep Ho at bay physically and emotionally. However in the end, they get back together. Their actions indicate a continual pattern of abuse, break-up, finally followed by reconciliation. As in the previous times, in the beginning Ho does try to make the relationship work, but gradually the destructive side of his personality takes over and the familiar cycle of mutual abuse and dependence starts once more.
As Lai and Ho's relationships starts falling apart again, Lai befriends Chang, a fellow Chinese from Taiwan at work. In some sense, Chang is Ho's opposite. Whereas Ho is manipulative and volatile, Chang is straightforward and stable. After Ho fully recovers, he resumes his playboy lifestyle and leaves Lai. Lai copes with the loss by spending more and more time with Chang (although his relationship with him is entirely platonic). Chang's unassuming self-awareness and sincerity help Lai out of his depression, contributing to his eventual realization that his relationship with Ho Po-Wing is based on an ideal which no longer has any basis in reality.
After a few months, Ho again contacts Lai, but this time, Lai has the strength to avoid starting the cycle. While on the surface, Ho is angry about Lai's rejection, privately he also mourns this loss. Eventually, Lai finds the strength to visit the waterfalls and return to Hong Kong.
[edit] Critical reception
In the San Francisco Chronicle, Edward Guthmann gave the film an ecstatic review:
"Were Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg alive today, and able to see what Wong has done here -- stretching and shrinking camera speeds, using brief freeze frames in the middle of a scene, creating impressions and glances instead of aping the too-familiar standards of movie narratives -- they'd be thrilled and invigorated. Rather than being enslaved by the forms and formulas of the Hollywood movies he grew up on, Wong has twisted, eviscerated and redefined film technique. His film is a splash of cold, fresh water on the face of a tired, over-fed beast."[2]
Stephen Holden gave Happy Together an equally admiring review in the New York Times:
" "When you travel, your first discovery is that you do not exist," Elizabeth Hardwick observed in her book Sleepless Nights. That sense of acute isolation while in transit is woven into the exhilarated, brooding tango music seeping through the soundtrack of Wong Kar-Wai's powerfully moody film Happy Together... Happy Together, which the New York Film Festival is showing tonight at 6 P.M. and tomorrow at 9 P.M., is a more coherent, heartfelt movie than the director's fantastical Hong Hong romps, Chungking Express and Fallen Angels (which the Film Festival showed on Tuesday). At the same time, it is as stylistically brash, young at heart and pulsing with life as these two earlier Wong films."[3]
Jonathan Rosenbaum gave the film a somewhat mixed review in the Chicago Reader:
"Like its characters, Happy Together is less a film with a subject than a film about not being able to find one. At best it's a movie about being at loose ends, though it seems to mean something more for some Chinese viewers. Asian film specialist Tony Rayns, who subtitled the film, claims that it's "one of the most searing accounts ever made of doomed and destructive love, but also a strong and very moving affirmation of romantic folly." Presumably Wong hopes so, if only to justify all this lurching around. For me Happy Together is more like a striking mannerist style in search of content, made poignant only by the homesickness and emotional confusion underlying the effort."[4]
In Box Office Magazine, Wade Major gave the film one of its most negative reviews:
"Shock value and the Cannes fest's best director prize aside, Wong's follow-up to the lavishly overpraised Chungking Express offers little in the way of stylistic or narrative progress, although it should please his core fans. As with previous efforts, Wong's "style" here consists primarily of random experimentation with film stocks, exposures, frame rates and other assorted laboratory tricks. Had such tinkering been in the service of a story, it might be possible to cut him some slack. But a near-total absence of narrative very quickly makes even the most minute excesses in style almost unbearably tedious. As music and imagery splash across the screen, audiences are treated to nothing more exciting than boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy gets boy back, boy loses boy, boy gets boy back, boy loses boy, und so weiter."[5]
[edit] Box Office
During its Hong Kong theatrical release, Happy Together made HK $8,600,141 at the box office. The tally is unspectacular, but respectable given the subject matter and restrictive Category III rating. It was also typical of a Wong Kar Wai film.
Happy Together also had a limited theatrical run in North America through Kino International, where it grossed US $320,319.
[edit] Awards and nominations
- 1997 Cannes Film Festival
- Won: Best Director (Wong Kar-wai)
- Nominated: Palm d'Or
- 1998 Arizona International Film Festival
- Won: Audience Award - Most Popular Foreign Film
- 1997 Golden Horse Awards
- Won: Best Cinematography (Christopher Doyle)
- Nominated: Best Director (Wong Kar-wai)
- Nominated: Best Actor (Leslie Cheung)
- 1997 Hong Kong Film Awards
- Won: Best Actor (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai)
- Nominated: Best Picture
- Nominated: Best Director (Wong Kar-wai)
- Nominated: Best Actor (Leslie Cheung)
- Nominated: Best Supporting Actor (Chang Chen)
- Nominated: Best Art Direction (William Chang)
- Nominated: Best Cinematography (Christopher Doyle)
- Nominated: Best Costume and Make-up Design (William Chang)
- Nominated: Best Film Editing (William Chang, Wong Ming-lam)
- 1998 Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards
- Film of Merit
- 1998 Independent Spirit Awards
- Nominated: Best Foreign Film
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
Feature films: As Tears Go By (1988) • Days of Being Wild (1991) • Chungking Express (1994) • Ashes of Time (1994) • Fallen Angels (1995) • Happy Together (1997) • In the Mood for Love (2000) • 2046 (2004) • Eros (The Hand) (2004) • My Blueberry Nights (2007) • The Lady from Shanghai (2007)
Short Films: wkw/tk/1996@7′55″hk.net (1996) • Hua Yang De Nian Hua (2000) • The Hire: The Follow (2001) • Six Days (2002)
