Happy Together
Happy Together
•
1h 36m
Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 1997 • Hong Kong
Starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing
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 Chiu Wai and Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing 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 LGBTQ community suddenly faced an uncertain future—Wong crafts a feverish look at the life cycle of a love affair that is 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.
Up Next in Happy Together
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HAPPY TOGETHER Alternate Version
Presented here is the 1997 theatrical version of HAPPY TOGETHER in its original color.
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Buenos Aires Zero Degree
This 1999 documentary by Kwan Pun-leung and Amos Lee chronicles the making of HAPPY TOGETHER and features interviews with director Wong Kar Wai and actor Tony Leung Chiu Wai as well as numerous deleted scenes.
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Queersighted: The Ache of Desire
The following conversation between Queersighted series programmer Michael Koresky, author of Film Comment’s Queer & Now & Then column, and film critic and editor Melissa Anderson was recorded in 2019.