Happy Together 1997

Happy Together 1997
Chun gwong cha sit (original title)
1h 36min | Drama , Romance | 17 May 1997 (France)
Storyline:
Yiu-Fai and Po-Wing arrive in Argentina from Hong Kong and take to the road for a holiday. Something is wrong and their relationship goes adrift. A disillusioned Yiu-Fai starts working at a tango bar to save up for his trip home. When a beaten and bruised Po-Wing reappears, Yiu-Fai is empathetic but is unable to enter a more intimate relationship. After all, Po-Wing is not ready to settle down. Yiu-Fai now works in a Chinese restaurant and meets the youthful Chang from Taiwan. Yiu-Fai's life takes on a new spin, while Po-Wing's life shatters continually in contrast.
User review:
Something of an obvious precursor to the subsequent masterpiece In the Mood for Love (2000); Happy Together (1997) is a tragic love story by way of recollection. If you're at all familiar with the work of director Wong Kar-Wai – from his breakthrough film Days of Being Wild (1991), to his more recent masterwork, the unsung 2046 (2004) – then you'll be accustomed to his personal approach to cinema; from that continually drifting sense of quiet melancholy and disconnected ennui – all captured by a roving camera that conspires to alienate characters from one another by intrusive shot composition and naturalist production design – and a beguiling approach to the concept of time continually abstracted in order to create drama from moments of fond reminisce. Once again, the feeling expressed in Happy Together is that of loneliness and despair, as characters drift spectre-like through desolate cities attempting to cling to moments and memories as if gasping for their final breath; and all the while distorted by a frequently hypnotic approach to music, structure, pace and cinematography.
If the film lacks the sophistication of the aforementioned In the Mood for Love, it is only because the process of refinement has replaced the edginess and earthiness of this film, with a studied, technical grandeur and ornate beauty that is really quite transcendent. Nonetheless, the style and tone of Happy Together fits the mood of the film perfectly; capturing the feckless uncertainly of the character's lives – both together and apart – and concurrently suggesting the idea of memory and repetition that plays an important role in the way the narrative ultimately plays out. The first viewing might very well be confusing, with scenes occurring that seem to simultaneously represent both the past and the present, and with information presented in a series of incredibly quick cuts, disconnected voice-over and a continually jarring cross-cutting back and forth between lurid colour and an oddly tinted monochrome, which seems to work on an emotional level, as opposed to any kind of narrative convention.