Hong Kong | 96 minutes
Director: Wong Kar-Wai
One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Happy Together, 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. The title, in case you haven’t guessed, is ironic.
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.
A fabulous film by one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of his time (and ever since) in his creative prime, Happy Together is one of the key films of the ‘90s, both for what it has to say and the beautiful, stylish way it goes about saying it.