Happy Together

The title Happy Together comes from the 60's pop hit and is featured in the film.

This film stars the late Leslie Cheung as Ho Po-Wing and the current 2046 hot favourite, Tony Leung Chiu Wai as Lai Yiu-Fai.

The duo play a couple that grows rapidly estranged when they go to Brazil. As many who have watched this film would point out, the relationship cools during the course of the movie, so the hottest action you do see is at the very beginning where the two engage in somewhat rough hanky panky.

Yiu-Fai becomes a doorman, something he finds demeaning, but not as demeaning as when he see Po-Wing out with his many Caucasian boyfriends. The two attempt to get back together, and there follows some interaction that is somewhere between sweet and blase.

Po-Wing is whiny and ungrateful; Yiu-Fai is seen as long suffering yet dependant on Po-Wing. Yet the viewer comes to the realisation that both need each other just as they need to break off the relationship once and for all. Po-Wing comes out the loser in this, though in essence, they both are, as Yiu-Fai realises that he loves the man less and less.

I won't spoil the end, but there isn't very much to spoil.

Like almost all of Wong Kar Wai's movies, Happy Together's narrative is lost in the sheer atmosphere of the film. You can just about smell Po-Wing's dingy apartment and feel the heat of the kitchens where Yiu-Fai worked part time. Being a Hong Kong film in 1997, the idea of it being linked to the handover is almost unavoidable, making it a film about ties that can never be severed, though two grow apart.

The music compliments the images be they black and white or fully coloured, and yes there are both. As always, Wong Kar Wai works with Christopher Doyle to paint images that are heavy with motivation and filled with depth.

Dialogue is presented mostly in Cantonese, with a little Brazilian and Mandarin but there is a subtitled VHS and DVD edition.

All in all, it gives the impression of an art film, and like an art film, it touches the viewer on a level that can't quite be grasped.

I apologise for the short review, but this is something that has to be experienced rather than explained.