Happy Together

A film by Wong Kar-Wai (Hong-Kong, 1997),

with Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung and Chang Chen.

Best Direction at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.

"Let's start from scratch again..." Everytime Ho Po-Wing says this to Lai Yiu-Fai, the two lovers get reconciled with each other for the best and the worst. Again. And this time, they've decided to move from Hong-Kong to Argentina to make a new start...

Wong Kar-Wai portrays in a most stylish way a gay love between two young men played by as outstanding actors as Tony Leung (Jean-Jacques Annaud's Lover) and Leslie Cheung (David Cronenberg's M. Butterfly), both having been already gathered in Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine. The photography is astonishing: Wong Kar-Wai plays with contrasts from sepia to saturated colors and every shot seems to highlight the director's most acute sense of composition and aesthetism. No wonder the film was awarded Cannes Best Direction Prize: Wong Kar-Wai has definitely gained in cinematographic maturity by transcending the redundant aesthetic twitches that ended up poisoning Fallen Angels -his previous work. His directing skills, in Happy Together, have eventually inspired this simple story with a fascinating and moving dimension, emphasized by a unique visual approach, a highly sensitive interpretation and a very well-thought soundtrack.

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