HAPPY TOGETHER (1997)
"One day we might start over. For him, 'starting over' has many meanings."
3 out of ****
Starring Tony Leung, Leslie Cheung, Chang Chen Written & Directed by Wong Kar-wai Cinematography by Christopher Doyle
When you watch a Wong Kar-wai movie, you get the impression that he is impatient with the way things are usually done in movies. He isn't interested in story as a join-the-dots sequence of events, but as a basis for visual improvisation. He isn't interested in exploring people and their feelings through dialogue and conflict, but is intrigued by the patterns of light and shade on someone's features as they stand brooding in a dark street, lighting a cigarette. It's a shame, then, that HAPPY TOGETHER devotes so much time and energy to a love story which doesn't much seem to interest him, never mind the audience.
The lovers are Lai and Ho, two Hong Kong ex-pats living in Argentina. They are played by two of Hong Kong's leading men, Tong Leung (CHUNG KING EXPRESS) and Leslie Cheung (FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE). The movie isn't sentimental or prudish or righteous about their relationship. It is unusually frank in its depiction of their sexuality--there's no way in hell two Hollywood stars would have accepted these roles as written--but it is not a platform for gay rights. They are lovers who happen to be homosexual. End of story. There is no concession made to the possibility that some people might consider the subject matter risqué or offensive or controversial. What a relief.
But this refreshing directness goes only so far. The movie seems intent only on proving that a story about homosexual lovers engaged in constant spats and confrontations and reconciliations can be just as pointless and repetitive as its heterosexual equivalent.
The pattern is established early on. Ho is moody and mercurial and petulant and needy; Lai is balanced and stoic and responsible. He loves Ho, but knows that he shouldn't: Ho is one of those self-destructive personalities who drag others down with them. When Ho leaves Lai early in the movie, Lai tries to maintain a certain distance when Ho comes back to him, knowing that if they resume their relationship, he will be hurt again. And so it goes: Lai tries to maintain an even keel while Ho is unpredictable and exasperating.
The film also explores, in a desultory way, the lives of ex-patriates, people far from home in a foreign land; it considers what it feels like to be an outsider. Lai strikes up a friendship with another Hong Kong man (Chang Chen) who works in the same kitchen, because of their shared nationality. This relationship is, oddly, more affecting than that of the lovers. The friendship picks up a recurring theme in the three Wong films I've seen: it shows how brief relationships, lives that touch each other only tangentially, can still be profoundly important to us. These fragile connections are a vital part of what it means to be human.
This theme is the closest Wong comes to making any sort of deep philosophical statement, but such a statement is hardly necessary: the man has style, and this is HAPPY TOGETHER's saving grace. He has a marvellous sense of texture and ambience; watching his movies, you become aware of how monotonously glossy, polished, and sterile other movies are. He infuses his works with energy and vibrancy and colour and sound--with life. The cramped, hot, seedy apartment where the lovers live. A noisy, smoky, neon-shot club. A cool, shady doorway in a cobblestoned alley, touched by the first light of the day. Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle are sensitive to each setting, and the way they shift restlessly from one shot to the next keeps the film fresh and invigorating.
This kaleidoscopic approach is rather hit-and-miss, but, still, it seems to me that Wong is one of the few directors working today who is genuinely interested in extending the possibilities of cinema, of finding new means of expression. When he can combine sounds and feelings and pictures in just the right way--as he does in the closing sequence, when a melancholy Lai rides the Hong Kong subway to the tune of "Happy Together"--his work is exhilarating. It is poetic, intense, entrancing. When it doesn't all fit together, I find myself wishing he'd hurry up and get to the point.
A Review by David Dalgleish (July 6/98)
dgd@intouch.bc.ca
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