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Happy Together

Original title: Chun gwong ja sit
  • 1997
  • Not Rated
  • 1h 36m
IMDb RATING
7.7/10
37K
YOUR RATING
Happy Together (1997)
Home Video Trailer from Kino International
Play trailer1:26
1 Video
98 Photos
Psychological DramaTragic RomanceDramaRomance

A couple take a trip to Argentina but both men find their lives drifting apart in opposite directions.A couple take a trip to Argentina but both men find their lives drifting apart in opposite directions.A couple take a trip to Argentina but both men find their lives drifting apart in opposite directions.

  • Director
    • Wong Kar-Wai
  • Writers
    • Wong Kar-Wai
    • Manuel Puig
  • Stars
    • Leslie Cheung
    • Tony Leung Chiu-wai
    • Chang Chen
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.7/10
    37K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Wong Kar-Wai
    • Writers
      • Wong Kar-Wai
      • Manuel Puig
    • Stars
      • Leslie Cheung
      • Tony Leung Chiu-wai
      • Chang Chen
    • 123User reviews
    • 66Critic reviews
    • 70Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 7 wins & 20 nominations total

    Videos1

    Happy Together
    Trailer 1:26
    Happy Together

    Photos98

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    Top cast5

    Edit
    Leslie Cheung
    Leslie Cheung
    • Ho Po-wing
    Tony Leung Chiu-wai
    Tony Leung Chiu-wai
    • Lai Yiu-fai
    • (as Tony Chiu Wai Leung)
    Chang Chen
    Chang Chen
    • Chang
    Gregory Dayton
    • Lover
    Shirley Kwan
    Shirley Kwan
    • Fai's Girlfriend
    • (scenes deleted)
    • Director
      • Wong Kar-Wai
    • Writers
      • Wong Kar-Wai
      • Manuel Puig
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews123

    7.736.7K
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    Featured reviews

    jandesimpson

    A study of a traumatic relationship

    "Happy Together " is essentially a study of a couple falling in and out of love. Their sex - they are a gay couple from Hong Kong - hardly matters: the film could just as well have been about a straight or lesbian couple. The fact that very near the beginning there is as explicit a scene of male anal intercourse as one is likely to encounter in mainstream commercial cinema is far from gratuitously sensational. As the film is meant to start on a passionate high, this is the most convincing way of doing it - so be it. The director has the integrity not to repeat this for the reason that the couple never quite feel the same about each other again - indeed there is a great deal of alienation. Both have arrived in Argentina in search of work. Although the jobs undertaken by one of the pair, Lai, are fairly menial, first as a doorman at a Tango club and then a kitchen worker, he seems more stable than his companion, Ho, who does little but hustle, gets beaten up fairly early on and spends much of his time in an incapacitated state. In the room they share there is a lampshade depicting the Izuazi Falls. The cascade almost becomes a symbol for the relationship they would ideally like to achieve. Early on they hire a car to look for it but lose their way. After their relationship has finally broken Lai finds it, but as he is alone, the landmark seems sadly lacking in excitement. There is a third main character, a straight guy from Taiwan, who works in the kitchen with Lai. With his amiable self-sufficiency he seems to have been introduced to provide a balance to the angst of the main pair, a device that works well as it reinforces our sympathy for them. "Happy Together" looks rough and crude. A hand held camera is used with frenetic nervousness. Sequences of monochrome alternate with scenes that are almost perversely over-coloured. I know it is fashionable to give some films a nightmarish look. Here I found it a distinct stumbling block to be got over for the sake of a work that says so much about loneliness, homesickness and the struggle of people simply to be "happy together".
    qwertzy

    the face of loneliness

    In this Wong Kar Wai production, loneliness takes on the face of 3 Chinese travellers who, after alienating themselves from the society they came from, end up at the end of the world. Argentina, which is the antithesis of HK, may be the farthest place you can get from HK, but still they cannot entangle themselves from the emotional baggage they have been carrying. Loneliness is a state of mind which follows you no matter where you are, and ensnarls you when you are at your most vulnerable.

    While the story may be more famous as a film about gay relationship, it is in fact, not so. The lead characters just happen to be gay, and loneliness, with all the jealousy and melancholy that comes with it, takes centrestage.
    8jzappa

    A Highly Stylized Emotional Roller Coaster

    Happy Together is a throbbing, raw, and profoundly nostalgic lament from two displaced traveling Chinamen yearning for emotional soundness, for their homeland, and for each other. Wong doesn't front us any of the flickering that can still be struck between lovers who fight all the time. There is no deep poetic interpretation of the story itself, but by leaving so much unsaid, writer-director Wong Kar-Wai doesn't make the misstep of suffocating his characters' relationship with trite soap dialogue. That is not to say, however, that the film even remotely knows the meaning of the phrase "less is more."

    You don't watch this film as much as seize on to it. Letting it yank you every which way is a raucous yet intriguing excursion, with fertile visual stylizations that trail you long after seeing the film, all with the impact to communicate directly with the heart. The visuals make the film come alive, and make material the displacement, and thus the unhinging, that the main characters feel from their surroundings and each other. Rather than using dialogue, this highly stylized romance chiefly imparts its themes and moods through its images, and Wong fashions an interior audiovisual composition about the mood swings of a love affair. Wong's use of images for purely emotional photogenic value, feverish camera movements, jukebox soundtrack and his improvisation and experimentation with the actors have an effect reminiscent of Scorsese's Mean Streets. In Wong's emotional roller coaster of a film, the characters seem to have a formidable intuitive certainty that their relationship is star- crossed sooner or later, but they follow passionate impulses regardless, giving the film a dreamy texture that it can't shake as its lovers turn-step to and fro during their free-form Argentine spree.

    Wong gradually layers the relationship, just like it would happen in real life, and the doubts and obscurities are constant. He extracts powerful performances from his lead actors. While Leslie Cheung gracefully fluctuates his moments between yearning, resentment, and anger, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai is the calm eye of the storm.

    Leung acts from the inside. We intuit his feelings through his natural physical subtleties, chiefly through the sensitive eyes. Even purely physical scenes, like the fights he has with Leslie Cheung's character, don't happen suddenly. Leung winds up for these moments instinctively and then defensively underplays them. And when the tears come, they pour without affectation, making me wonder from what part of Leung's soul he quietly unearths these moments from as Wong rolls the camera.
    8andrewchristianjr

    WONDERFUL.

    A poignant portrait of a relationship between two men uprooted from their home country, Happy Together explores the ups and downs, the pros and cons of commitment, as the lead characters careen and collide against each other with their discordant personalities acted out wonderfully.
    9sannelehmann

    A film about alienation - inside and outside

    In "Happy Together" Director Wong Kar Wai tells us the story of a relationship that does not survive the alienation inside and outside.

    The film is set in Argentina where two lovers are stranded because they don't have enough money to return to their native Hong Kong.

    The film shows us that Fai and Po-wing are unable to find equality or balance in their relationship. It is a story about the way most relationships are defined by the balance of power.. and how this leads to despair. Fai reflects that their relationship was the happiest when Po-wing was ill and had to be cared for like a child. As Po Wing's health improves Fai draws away from him and refuses his attempts of closeness, illustrated by the constant battles over couch and bed. When Po-Wing is well enough to go out again by himself the balance of the power in relationship shifts. Po-wing slowly but surely slips away into the world of hustling. He never finds his way back to Fai who eventually saves enough money to go home.

    Both are emotionally devastated by the loss of their lover. We only see them being happy together in a glimpse, as they dance a slow dance together in their room. It seems the happiness in their relationship that Fai refers to in connection with Po-Wing's illness, is an isolated kind of happiness that he himself enjoys without Po-wing's knowledge. If they are ever indeed Happy Together we see it only in facial expressions, in their tone of voice but these are expressions of love and tenderness that never seem to reach the surface that remain unspoken.

    Wong Kar Wai's visual style is absolutely stunning. He conveys the alienation inside the relationship - and the alienation outside - (I am referring to the fact that they are in a different country) through colors and camera-movements. We are constantly looking at the protagonists from a corner high above or through the window of a seedy bar. Every single shot feels claustrophobic and it irritates the viewer. It makes the viewer long for closeness and clarity. It imitates the longing of the characters and their attempts - and failure - at connecting to each other. Their feelings, as does the eye of the lens, float above them in a silent, detached loneliness.

    "Happy Together" is one of those films that I do not really enjoy watching. It is actually physically painful to watch because it hurts the eye as much as it hurts the soul. The film makes its style and subject matter into one flesh, a "happy" marriage of form and content.

    9/10

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Chang Chen's storyline was completely improvised. Director Wong Kar-Wai discovered the restaurant, China Central, by chance and, seizing Leslie Cheung's absence due to a concert tour, decided to keep shooting. Chang's plot was thus created.
    • Goofs
      When Po-Wing knocks the packs of cigarettes off the clock, it says 2:38, but then it cuts to another angle of him doing this with the clock saying 3:33, and then it cuts again to the clock saying 2:38.
    • Quotes

      Lai Yiu-fai: Turns out that lonely people are all the same.

    • Crazy credits
      In some prints, Jacques Picoux (the French subtitle translator) is listed twice in a row in the closing credits.
    • Alternate versions
      During a fire accident in 2019 while the 4K digital restoration was in progress, some of the original 35mm camera negative was lost. In the ensuing months the negative was attempted to be restored as much possible, but a portion of it had been permanently damaged. Lost was not only some of the picture but also the sound in those reels. As a result, Wong had to shorten some of Tony Leung's monologues, but with the work of the restoration crew of L'Immagine Ritrovata, they managed to restore most of the scenes to better quality.
    • Connections
      Featured in The Movie Show: Episode dated 25 May 1997 (1997)
    • Soundtracks
      Cucurrucucu Paloma
      by Caetano Veloso

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • May 30, 1997 (Hong Kong)
    • Countries of origin
      • Hong Kong
      • South Korea
      • Japan
    • Languages
      • Cantonese
      • Spanish
      • English
      • Mandarin
    • Also known as
      • Happy Together. Historia de un encuentro
    • Filming locations
      • Taipei City, Taiwan
    • Production companies
      • Jet Tone Production
      • Block 2 Pictures
      • Seowoo Film Company
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $4,200,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $320,319
    • Gross worldwide
      • $1,539,811
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 36 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
      • Black and White
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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