HAPPY TOGETHER Movie Review

Cheun Gwong Tsa Sit

From Hong Kong cult fave Wong Kar-Wai comes a neon-lit love story about a pair of gay lovers (Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung) who travel from Hong Kong to Buenos Aires in hopes of resurrecting their stormy relationship. Happy Together is a sometimes lyrical/sometimes disjointed series of moments from a love affair, filtered through the stylized, constantly moving images of Christopher Doyle's dazzling camerawork. It's more of a beautiful object than it is an engaging film, however, and though individual scenes—a mountain of cigarettes collected by one man to eliminate the other's excuse for going out—jump out at you as little nuggets of ingenuity, the total effect is of a fleeting, incomplete creation that never fully anchors itself in our imaginations. Best Director Award, 1997 Cannes Film Festival.

NEXT STOP … Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Days of Being Wild

1996 93m/C HK Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung, Chang Chen; D:Wong Kar-Wai; W:Wong Kar-Wai; C:Christopher Doyle; M:Danny Chung. Cannes Film Festival ‘97: Best Director (Kar-Wai); Nominations: Independent Spirit Awards ‘98: Best Foreign Film. VHS KIV