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One of my favorite directors, Wong Kar-wai, is represented in FilmStruck’s new theme “Gay and Lesbian Cinema.” His film Happy Together (1997), a deceptively simple story about a gay couple in a turbulent relationship, earned him the director’s prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was also nominated for the Palme d’Or.
Happy Together was constructed through Wong’s highly organic filmmaking process, which shaped his directorial style during the 1990s. It’s definitely a process that they do not encourage in film school! Wong and his long-time collaborators, cinematographer Christopher Doyle and art director William Chang, did not begin their films with a script. Instead, they created the content during the shooting and editing phases. Wong described his process as beginning with place, not plot. Drawing inspiration from music and setting, the director and his collaborators found their narratives as they created the visuals. Wong tended to use the same actors from film to film, including Tony Leung (or, Tony Leung Chiu-wai), who stars in Happy Together. Actors like Leung worked closely with Wong to develop their characters.
The strength of Wong’s process is that the collaboration, improvisation and element of chance inherent in it inspire innovation and originality. The downside is that without a plan in place, any unexpected snags can balloon into monumental setbacks. For example, the six-week location shoot for Happy Together in Buenos Aires turned into a difficult four months. Problems included everything from technical difficulties with the lights and camera to disputes with Leung over the explicitness of the sex scenes to disputes with the Argentinian crew.
Buenos Aires was pivotal in inspiring the narrative for Happy Together, partly because the city was not what the filmmakers expected. Consequently, it remained unfamiliar and alien to them, creating a sense of dislocation as the backdrop for the story. The story follows the doomed relationship of Lai Yiu-fai (Leung) and Ho Po-wing (Leslie Cheung), who leave Hong Kong for Argentina in the hopes of a fresh start. The pair have a pattern of conflict, breakup and reconciliation. Fai, the stable partner, knows the relationship is not working, but he can’t say no when Po-wing suggests they start over. Po-wing is handsome and exciting but also unreliable and unfaithful. It’s not that he doesn’t love Fai; he just doesn’t know how to commit. The English title Happy Together, which references the 1960s pop song by The Turtles sung by Danny Chung on the soundtrack, is meant to be ironic.
Wong is considered a stylist, and his films have been labeled arthouse movies. He and Doyle employ bold techniques such as swish pans, step printing, color, slow motion and jump cuts to help tell their stories. In Happy Together, when Fai and Po-wing are together, their conversations are disrupted, and their scenes are fragmented through editing—a commentary on their broken relationship. After one of their breakups, Fai finds friendship with Chang, who is also in Argentina to figure his life out. The most complete conversations are between Fai and Chang, not the two lovers.
Despite its nonlinear structure and arthouse style, Happy Together is universal in its story of a passionate but destructive relationship. Wong stated in interviews that he did not create a “gay story” but a love story that is “about how a person quits his habits.” The two principles just happened to be men. Anyone who has ever been in love with a commitment-phobe can relate to Fai in this film. I know I did. Still, given the content, the film received a Category III rating in Hong Kong, which is equivalent to NC-17 in America. It was banned in Malaysia and South Korea, though eventually released in the latter.
But, Happy Together is more than an ill-fated love story, because it indirectly references the historical event that loomed so large for Hong Kong in the 1990s. In July 1997—two months after the release of Happy Together —Hong Kong was transferred from Britain to mainland China in an event known as the Handover. A sense of loss and dislocation permeated many of the films from Hong Kong during the years leading up to the Handover, reflecting the people’s ambivalence about their fate. The Handover was very much on the mind of Wong Kar-wai when he chose to show passport pages with the stamped photos of the protagonists as the film’s first images. The opening credits are in red and white, like the colors of Hong Kong’s flag.
The first spoken words of the film, “We could start over,” is a sentiment often expressed by Po-wing in an effort to salvage his relationship with Fai. Starting over is a theme in the movie; the lovers start over more than once but also begin their lives anew after their breakup(s). Outside of the storyline, the idea of starting over is relevant to Wong, who, in shooting halfway around the world in a country unfamiliar to him, was trying something different. And, Hong Kong was about to start over as part of mainland Communist China, an event whose outcome was unpredictable. As Fai notes in the movie, starting over can have many meanings.
Susan Doll