We just saw on DVD Wong Kar-Wai's Cheun gwong tsa sit (Happy Together, 1997), a film shot partly in B&W that explores the growing alienation two homosexual men from Hong Kong experience in antipodean Buenos Aires.
Although it won WKW the Best Director prize -the first for a Chinese director- at the Cannes Film Festival, the initial personal impression I got wasn't too overwhelming. Inessa actually liked it; I found it a bit more of a muddle (and this is already taking into consideration Wong's penchant for non-linear storytelling).
Without doubt, one can already see the development of the director's knack of portraying relationship conflicts that he would eventually demonstrate impeccably in later stories of heterosexual entanglements, Fa yeung nin wa (In the Mood for Love, 2000) and 2046 (2004). Of course he's handled onscreen relationships before or given free rein to his frenetic, jigsaw mise en scène with his patented UnsteadyCam. Two examples that come to mind are Chung hing sam lam (Chungking Express, 1994) and A Fei jing juen (Days of Being Wild, 1990), set in Hong Kong and Manila respectively.
In an AOL reader's review, Anthony Leong described the movie's portrayal of a "pathological relationship" as insightful precisely for its reality-based tediousness and repetitiveness. I tend to disagree, though, that the casting went out on a limb for putting "two of Hong Kong's brightest straight actors" in the role of gay lovers. Maybe Tony Leung isn't but wasn't the late great Leslie Cheung openly gay? Anyway, Yanks would no doubt call it ahead of its time since it wasn't until late last year when Taiwanese director Ang Lee was able to cast two of Hollywood's brightest straight actors (ahem), Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in the Oscar-bound Brokeback Mountain.
Not wanting to do a bodge job of describing the plot of this film, allow me to just cite the eminent Mr Leong:
(Now that we're back in the business of criticising Yanks, let me just comment about the way they take such a long time to clue in into certain trends that have long dominated the world outside of America or have even gone stale elsewhere. Wong Kar-Wai is a good case in point. If rental-video-clerk-turned-emblematic-director Quentin Tarantino hadn't been into chopsocky films, who knows how long people in the States would've taken to notice the Shanghai-born filmmaker. Worse, the way everyone bandwagons it's astounding, especially how people there seem to give up on critical thinking all together. No wonder everyone went for the invasion of Iraq and are not exactly up in arms over the truly impeachable offense of federal spying. To my relief, a film critic from the ultimate benderville, San Francisco, actually questioned the basis of Wong's celebrity in a piece from November 1997. To wit, G. Allen Johnson says "It's hard to decide whether Wong Kar-Wai is great or just momentarily fashionable. His films are confidently made, to the point of being cocky, yet it's their very bravado that makes them suspicious.")
(Of course it's just like me to criticise Americans and then quote one of them. There are, of course, spot-on remarks in the Johnson review: "Wong works with an internal clock rather than a conventional one. He edits his film not to music or plot resonance, but to emotion - or lack thereof. In some ways, he's a minimalist, using glances and action to convey information. When there is dialogue or narration, he makes every word count".)
Since I've gone this much stealing from AOL proprietary material, might as well go the Full Monty and iterate the way the film's technical details measure up, circa 1997:
Although it won WKW the Best Director prize -the first for a Chinese director- at the Cannes Film Festival, the initial personal impression I got wasn't too overwhelming. Inessa actually liked it; I found it a bit more of a muddle (and this is already taking into consideration Wong's penchant for non-linear storytelling).Without doubt, one can already see the development of the director's knack of portraying relationship conflicts that he would eventually demonstrate impeccably in later stories of heterosexual entanglements, Fa yeung nin wa (In the Mood for Love, 2000) and 2046 (2004). Of course he's handled onscreen relationships before or given free rein to his frenetic, jigsaw mise en scène with his patented UnsteadyCam. Two examples that come to mind are Chung hing sam lam (Chungking Express, 1994) and A Fei jing juen (Days of Being Wild, 1990), set in Hong Kong and Manila respectively.
In an AOL reader's review, Anthony Leong described the movie's portrayal of a "pathological relationship" as insightful precisely for its reality-based tediousness and repetitiveness. I tend to disagree, though, that the casting went out on a limb for putting "two of Hong Kong's brightest straight actors" in the role of gay lovers. Maybe Tony Leung isn't but wasn't the late great Leslie Cheung openly gay? Anyway, Yanks would no doubt call it ahead of its time since it wasn't until late last year when Taiwanese director Ang Lee was able to cast two of Hollywood's brightest straight actors (ahem), Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in the Oscar-bound Brokeback Mountain.
Not wanting to do a bodge job of describing the plot of this film, allow me to just cite the eminent Mr Leong:
Lai Yiu-Fai (Leung) and Ho Po-Wing (Cheung) are a couple of ex-patriates living together in Buenos Aires. However, after an aborted trip to see the Iguazu Falls on the border of Argentina and Brazil, a symbol of renewal that is touched upon throughout the film, they drift apart. Lai becomes a doorman at a tango club, which pays enough for him to maintain a claustrophobic flat in a rundown building. Meanwhile, Ho sells himself out as a hustler, making a living off of a series of one-night stands. However, after finding Ho bleeding on the street, beaten up by a 'bad trick', Lai decides to take Ho back in an attempt to 'start over', and finally make the trip to Iguazu.Maybe one of the reasons I found the film a muddle was that I couldn't be fagged to figure the more-linear-than-usual WKW plot. Can't be bothered to make heads and tails of it for a blog entry, so let me just again plagiarise the quotable Mr Leong:
HT exhibits many of the hallmarks inherent in all of Wong Kar-Wai's films. The story, rather than being plot-driven, is theme-driven, with many layers of interpretation. Every aspect of the story, whether it be characters, the occupations of the characters, or even where they stand in a room, speaks to hidden metaphors and subtext. His characters are usually divided into two camps with opposing philosophies, and this is seen in the contrast between Lai and Ho. Lai, the more reserved and responsible of the two, is haunted by the past and is blinded to opportunities in the present by the haze of nostalgia. Ho, the more petty of the pair, has a shiftless life without any 'memory' of the past, which leads to a meaningless existence and the need to define his own purpose through his relationships with others. This same juxtaposition was seen between Yuddy and the cop in "Days of Being Wild", and the Hitman and Michelle in "Fallen Angels".One can only surmise that this bloke is a non-professional critic for the way he actually talks about the film and not around it, which most armchair-type chaps usually do, without having seen all of the film, using blatantly evasive codswallop such as comparisons to the Beat Generation. Just because the blurb said something like "gay road movie set in Argentina" doesn't necessarily mean you should dust off your Viking 1957 first edition of "On the Road" nor flex your Jack Kerouac metaphors from high school! Additionally any mention of Ginzburg or Burrough is completely unwarranted.
(Now that we're back in the business of criticising Yanks, let me just comment about the way they take such a long time to clue in into certain trends that have long dominated the world outside of America or have even gone stale elsewhere. Wong Kar-Wai is a good case in point. If rental-video-clerk-turned-emblematic-director Quentin Tarantino hadn't been into chopsocky films, who knows how long people in the States would've taken to notice the Shanghai-born filmmaker. Worse, the way everyone bandwagons it's astounding, especially how people there seem to give up on critical thinking all together. No wonder everyone went for the invasion of Iraq and are not exactly up in arms over the truly impeachable offense of federal spying. To my relief, a film critic from the ultimate benderville, San Francisco, actually questioned the basis of Wong's celebrity in a piece from November 1997. To wit, G. Allen Johnson says "It's hard to decide whether Wong Kar-Wai is great or just momentarily fashionable. His films are confidently made, to the point of being cocky, yet it's their very bravado that makes them suspicious.")
(Of course it's just like me to criticise Americans and then quote one of them. There are, of course, spot-on remarks in the Johnson review: "Wong works with an internal clock rather than a conventional one. He edits his film not to music or plot resonance, but to emotion - or lack thereof. In some ways, he's a minimalist, using glances and action to convey information. When there is dialogue or narration, he makes every word count".)
Since I've gone this much stealing from AOL proprietary material, might as well go the Full Monty and iterate the way the film's technical details measure up, circa 1997:
The images that Wong Kar-Wai and his ace cinematographer Christopher Doyle in HT are, as usual, stunning. Using the same techniques employed in "Fallen Angels", where the luminance of the image was boosted through the use of high-contrast film, Wong Kar-Wai creates a dizzying array of richly-textured shots. Those familiar with his films will see the usual indulgences-- the sped-up footage of city traffic, the arty and introspective slo-mo, the MTV-school-of-film-making, the long monologues, the shifting points-of-view, and the Godardian influences of jump-cutting and iconography (the fixation on stationary objects, such as clocks, street signs, and statues)-- all of which speak to the themes common to all Wong Kar-Wai films: the transiency of relationships, the introspective point-of-view, and the persistence of memory.Although there were some pleasing bits in the film I glossed over the significance of the subplot involving Chang Chen (Lo Dark Cloud in Wo hu cang long (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000) I would have to agree with the AOL reviewer who says that Happy Together is "a straightforward narrative with the existential philosophy and the stylish-camera work toned-down", which essentially makes it only passable as a Wong Kar-Wai film. "The exhilaration of watching his films comes from fitting together the pieces of a 90-minute intellectual puzzle, and subsequent viewings generally revealed new interpretations and nuances", says Anthony Leong. This one, however, does not have enough of that nor even enough of the kind of eye-candy that made In the Mood for Love such pleasurable viewing.
