The film returns to color (with only brief flashes of black-and-white periodically interspersed) for their life after break-up. Broke and stuck on the other side of the world from home, Lai, our narrator and the practical one in the duo, finds a dump of a room in a communal apartment and a job as the doorman of a tango bar. Ho, the impulsive, emotionally erratic pretty boy, slips right into the life of a rent-boy, flaunting his lifestyle in front of Lai with a cruel smile before showing up on his doorstep bloodied, bruised and beaten. Lai takes him in, caring for him with a devotion that shows how much he cares, but won't take him back. "One thing I never told Ho," he confides to the audience. "I didn't want him to heal too quickly. Those were our happiest days." He also steals Ho's passport, perhaps as a way of keeping him close, possibly out of spite, but making a prisoner of Ho nonetheless. As Ho (all but helpless with his hands wrapped up in heavy bandages) spends his days chain smoking and killing time in the dinghy room and Lai gets a job in a restaurant kitchen, a new character enters the story, or rather brings his own story to the film. Chang (Chen Chang), an upbeat young guy from Taiwan, befriends Lai in what is a brief stop on his wanderlust journey to the end of the world. Their easy-going friendship only makes Lai more homesick.
Where previous Wong films like Ashes of Time and Chungking Express fractured the narrative with staccato editing and shifts back and forth through time, Happy Together presents a fairly straightforward narrative (even if the story is anything but conventional) and a visual style defined by longer takes and striking handheld camerawork that brings the viewer intimately close to the characters. And while it focuses on a gay couple (itself quite daring in Chinese cinema, which shies away from explicitly gay couples in movies and prefers suggestion to announcement), its portrait of characters who love each other but are combustible when together isn't limited by the sex of the characters. They can be cruel, manipulative, dismissive and vindictive, but they are alive and vital. Cheung is all emotional impulse and convincingly reckless and self-destructive as Ho, a man used to seducing his way through life with his boyish beauty. Leung is more thoughtful and sad as the quiet, introspective Lai, whose ruminations provides the melancholy narration. "I always thought I was different from Po-wing. It turns out lonely people are the same everywhere."
Ultimately, the film is about loneliness and disconnection, feelings exacerbated by being stuck so far away from home, in a culture that speaks a different language and dances to a different tune. Slow, sad tangos (predominantly Astor Piazzolla's melancholy "Tango Apasionado") sets the tone and the temperament of the film. It's not always pleasant to be in their company and on initial viewing the characters can come off as emotionally brutal and callously manipulative, but under these actions they are vulnerable, yearning, fumbling people who genuinely love one another but keep falling into the same destructive patterns.
Wong's distinctive style reaches all the way to his singular approach to filmmaking. His shoots go on much longer than traditional productions and the scripts are often drastically rewritten in production, as the actors settle in and inhabit their characters and Wong responds to the chemistry of the cast and the atmosphere and possibilities of his locations. He spent four months on principal photography on Happy Together, most of it on location in Argentina, and drastically altered the storyline. By the time he honed the film down to its 97-minute running time, he had completely eliminated subplots and a major character played by Hong Kong music star Shirley Kwan (some of her scenes can be seen in the accompanying documentary Buenos Aires Zero Degree). Just as defining to Wong's cinema is Christopher Doyle's cinematography. His collaborator on seven key features and various short films, Doyle's handheld camerawork (both intimate and dynamic), beautiful and fluid compositions and distinctive palettes don't just set Wong's films apart from every director, they frame and capture the emotional tensions and edgy personal dynamics of every scene. The black-and-white scenes have a rich, sharp, nuanced quality reminiscent of Robby Muller's monochrome photography for Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch, a cool realism that stands in contrast to the dreamy oversaturated color palette of neon greens and reds that Doyle and Wong have made their trademark. It casts a spell of hyper-reality and immediacy softened by the longing and melancholy of the narration and music.
All of this is presented with a remarkable level of clarity and color in Kino's Blu-ray edition. Wong's work has rarely looked this vivid on home video. The black-and-white scenes are so clear you can practically see through the image while the colors of the rest of the film burn and glow through the nocturnal scenes, giving it an electric buzz and an alienated atmosphere. The disc also features the supplements from the earlier DVD release, presented here in HD. The hour-long documentary 1999 Buenos Aires Zero Degrees spotlights Wong's organic approach to filmmaking by showing the evolution of the film, including footage of the deleted scenes featuring Shirley Kwan, along with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. "Wong Kar-wai at the Museum of the Moving Image" features a Q&A with the director from 2008 (with an introduction by Ang Lee).
For more information about Happy Together, visit Kino Lorber. To order Happy Together, go to TCM Shopping.
by Sean Axmaker
