Happy Together

The misty cascading waterfall. The lighthouse at the end of the world. Hong Kong turned upside down. These are the magical images Wong Kar-wai presents as the backdrop to his Buenos Aires-set gay love story about two men who very much aren’t happy together, yet become even unhappier apart. If you’ve seen a Wong Kar-wai film before, you’ll be familiar with his style here, with lonely emotional beats emphasised by iconic music choices. Christopher Doyle’s slowed-down-sped-up cinematography casts a whole new light on the world and the profound poetics found in the everyday. Even if Happy Together is more uncomfortably self-loathing and less romantic than films like Chungking Express and In The Mood For Love, it is still beautiful and life-affirming in spite of that. The characters in this film are complicated and messy. They share a type of love and feelings so hard-to-define which few filmmakers are capable of representing, and yet Wong Kar-wai captures this effortlessly. And you’ll never guess which song will get stuck in your head after watching this…

Daniel Kallin