Film
Happy Together
- Director
- Wong Kar-Wai
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 97 mins
This 1997 triumph of style over content from Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai won the Best Director award at Cannes and follows in minute detail the break up of two gay lovers in exile. Escaping Hong Kong for Argentina in an attempt to rekindle their relationship, Tony Leung gets a job as a club doorman while his partner Leslie Cheung becomes a hustler. But things don’t get any better between them, and Leung soon falls for a young Taiwanese lad.
The film avoids making an issue of the couple’s homosexuality, highlighting the recriminations and guilt common to all imploding relationships regardless of gender or sexuality. But in spite of some fine acting, the plot is mediocre, the couple’s ceaseless juvenile bickering becoming tiresome rather than insightful. But if its all emotionally flat, at least the cinematography and editing are as stunning as ever.
It’s back on screen in the Watershed’s The World of Wong Kar-Wai season.
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