Happy Together

Over the past weekend, I watched one of my all time favorite films HAPPY TOGETHER by director Wong Kar Wai. As a filmmaker, I am often asked who is my favorite director and not to be politically correct, but I always answer I like films rather than a specific director. However I must say director Wong Kar Wai is at the very top of my list of influential film directors.

When I was in film school, I first fell in love with Wong's unconventional storytelling, casting, camera movement and cinematography. It is exactly these points which makes it hard for me to zone in on a director when I know these crew members of the film brought together the final film which I love so much. Happy Together is stunning, bold and an innovation piece of filmmaking.

My very first Wong Kar Wai film was Chungking Express. It was quirkly, modern, cool and very entertaining. Chungking starred Tony Leung who would become one of my favorite actors. A few years later Wong would release Happy Together starring Leung and Hong Kong superstar Leslie Cheung as Yiu-Fai and Po-Wing. The couple travel to Argentina from Hong Kong and decide to take a road trip to the southernmost tip of Argentina to see the magnificent Iguazu waterfalls all the while having a lamp in their possession of the waterfall. A lamp the mirrors the waterfalls and projects images of the beautiful waterfall.

Yiu-Fai and Po-Wing's relationship has stopped and started many times over the duration their time together. However just as the waterfall in the lamp presents an illusion of the real waterfall and occasionally needs to be fixed and resembled -- it is the perfect and cunning metaphor for their relationship. It also turns out that Argentina is on the exact opposite side of the planet as Hong Kong.

As the pair goes adrift, a disillusioned Yiu-Fai starts working in a tango bar to save up for his trip home when a battered Po-Wing reappears. Po-Wing wants to start over again, however Yiu-Fai is empathetic but is unable to enter a more intimate relationship. Eventually Yiu-Fai finds works in a Chinese restaurant and meets the youthful Chang from Taiwan.

The film is shot with such an gorgeous preoccupation with sun, night and water. There scene where the couple is on the rooftop above a gritty undeveloped section of Buenos Aires is so rich with color and the simple scene of the guys playing soccer in the alley near the Chinese restaurant is transformed with the lush flicker and constant sun beams into a beautifully blinding situation.

It is so hard to watch a relationship unravel right before your eyes. You want them to be happy together even though you know it will never work nor last. Why do opposites attract?

SEE HAPPY TOGETHER CLIP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gneSPuSSL2k&feature=related