Happy Together (1997)
Director: Wong Kar-wai Run Time: 96 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 1997 Language: Chinese
Starring: Chang Chen, Gregory Dayton, Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Yee-Gan Chan
Country: Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea
Language: Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish
Screening as part of The World of Wong Kar Wai
About the film:
One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung as a couple traveling through Argentina and locked in a turbulent cycle of infatuation and destructive jealousy as they break up, make up, and fall apart again and again.
Setting out to depict the dynamics of a queer relationship with empathy and complexity on the cusp of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong—when the country’s LGBT community suddenly faced an uncertain future—Wong crafts a feverish look at the life cycle of a love affair that’s by turns devastating and deliriously romantic.
Shot by ace cinematographer Christopher Doyle in both luminous monochrome and luscious saturated color, Happy Together is an intoxicating exploration of displacement and desire that swoons with the ache and exhilaration of love at its heart-tearing extremes.
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