Not just about a same-sex relationship
(Note:The Cannes-winning ''Blue is the Warmest Color'' may just become the current awards season's darling. It has just been nominated in the Golden Globes for Best Foreign-Language Film. With this, an Oscar nod may not be far behind. Many years back, there was also this LGBT film that was a sensation in Cannes - Wong Kar-Wai's ''Happy Together'' (which won the Best Director prize). I remember first seeing this film about a decade ago at Glorietta 4 Cinema, when they still had this so-called Art Film screening every week. Experiencing this masterpiece on the big screen, what I saw was a love story, regardless of the gender. Allow me to share my notes about the film right after seeing it back then.)
The title of this Wong Kar-Wai film suggests a harmonious and smooth relationship between two persons;however, as you watch ''Happy Together'', you will realize that the title is quite ironic.
For although the kind of relationship that the two main characters, Li Fai (Tony Leung) and Poh Wing (Leslie Cheung), have is one that is passionate and tender, it doesn't exactly mean that they are meant for each other, that their relationship is "made in heaven". Yet, it should be noted that their breaking apart appears to be not at all willed by either of them, but, even if we find in the film no outright condemnation of the affair, instigated by external circumstances over which they do not have absolute control.
As Chinese emigrants in Argentina hoping to find there solace, warmth, protection and love that otherwise they did not experience back home, the fact that they are in a foreign land would not guarantee the attainment of their objectives. On the other hand, the situation's being uncertain in nature could all the more aggravate the desolation and depression that these people want to relieve in the first place.
Thus, no matter how Li Fai and Poh Wing try to make their relationship bloom to the fullest, poverty (having no stable jobs), jealousy (having another object of affection) and unrest (being in a country that is just as volatile as their own) have only contributed to its withering away.
The depressing and confusing situation the characters are in is undeniably recognized by the viewers as it is visually presented either in the gloominess of raw black-and-white or in the artificiality of glowing colors, coupled with unconventional angles and shots that are characterized by mobility, proximity, high standpoint and split-second freeze frame.
Taking his cue from Michelangelo Antonioni, Wong illustrates the emotional and psychological state of the characters (what's going on inside them) as correlating with their milieu (what's going on outside), indicating a kind of interaction wherein the one may just as be the cause of the other's undoing. With this, it shows that "Happy Together" is not simply about a homosexual love affair, but, more so, about how outside factors (economic, social, political, geographical) can undermine, directly and subtly, something as personal and intimate as a human relationship. It only happens that in the film, both parties belong, by biological standards, to the same sex.
For although the kind of relationship that the two main characters, Li Fai (Tony Leung) and Poh Wing (Leslie Cheung), have is one that is passionate and tender, it doesn't exactly mean that they are meant for each other, that their relationship is "made in heaven". Yet, it should be noted that their breaking apart appears to be not at all willed by either of them, but, even if we find in the film no outright condemnation of the affair, instigated by external circumstances over which they do not have absolute control.
As Chinese emigrants in Argentina hoping to find there solace, warmth, protection and love that otherwise they did not experience back home, the fact that they are in a foreign land would not guarantee the attainment of their objectives. On the other hand, the situation's being uncertain in nature could all the more aggravate the desolation and depression that these people want to relieve in the first place.
Thus, no matter how Li Fai and Poh Wing try to make their relationship bloom to the fullest, poverty (having no stable jobs), jealousy (having another object of affection) and unrest (being in a country that is just as volatile as their own) have only contributed to its withering away.
The depressing and confusing situation the characters are in is undeniably recognized by the viewers as it is visually presented either in the gloominess of raw black-and-white or in the artificiality of glowing colors, coupled with unconventional angles and shots that are characterized by mobility, proximity, high standpoint and split-second freeze frame.
Taking his cue from Michelangelo Antonioni, Wong illustrates the emotional and psychological state of the characters (what's going on inside them) as correlating with their milieu (what's going on outside), indicating a kind of interaction wherein the one may just as be the cause of the other's undoing. With this, it shows that "Happy Together" is not simply about a homosexual love affair, but, more so, about how outside factors (economic, social, political, geographical) can undermine, directly and subtly, something as personal and intimate as a human relationship. It only happens that in the film, both parties belong, by biological standards, to the same sex.
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| The couple who is not exactly ''Happy Together'' |
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