The bit­ter roman­ti­cism of Wong Kar-wai’s Hap­py Together

Though the influ­ence of Hong Kong direc­tor Wong Kar-wai on Bar­ry Jenk­ins’ Moon­light has been well doc­u­ment­ed, the Best Pic­ture winner’s most direct allu­sion to the mas­ter of exquis­ite­ly stylised melan­choly comes via its brief use of Cae­tano Veloso’s ren­di­tion of ​‘Cucur­ru­cucú palo­ma’ by Mex­i­can com­pos­er Tomás Mén­dez, a lovesick piece also fea­tures in the sound­track of Wong’s own mood-drenched clas­sic of gay cin­e­ma, 1997’s Hap­py Togeth­er.

With this ref­er­ence, Jenk­ins pro­vides a wel­come nod to a cin­e­mat­ic kin­dred spir­it but also a poten­tial­ly mis­lead­ing one. For while Moon­light deliv­ers its decades-span­ning emo­tion­al tur­moil in a decep­tive­ly qui­et, even placid pack­age, Hap­py Togeth­er is a volatile dra­ma of per­pet­u­al styl­is­tic unrest, sub­ject­ing its audi­ence to a bar­rage of vibrant, rest­less imagery cut into jagged, dis­ori­ent­ing frag­ments. Even now – after two decades of hyper-stylised cin­e­ma, adver­tis­ing and music videos that have pushed the bound­aries of aes­thet­ic flashi­ness to the point of numb­ing sen­so­ry excess – Wong’s dynam­ic post­mod­ern spec­ta­cle still holds the pow­er to over­whelm and chal­lenge audiences.

In cre­at­ing this tur­bu­lent and claus­tro­pho­bic real­i­ty, Hap­py Togeth­er vivid­ly embod­ies the irre­deemably hos­tile envi­ron­ment that on-again, off-again cou­ple Lai Yiu-fai (Tony Leung) and Ho Po-wing (Leslie Che­ung) have unwit­ting­ly cre­at­ed for them­selves. We first catch this mis­er­able, co-depen­dent pair at the tail-end of their lat­est cycle of make-ups and break-ups. Hav­ing just arrived in Argenti­na with the hope of recap­tur­ing the spark in their rela­tion­ship, they instead find them­selves with noth­ing more than a pret­ty new back­drop for their usu­al bick­er­ing. They once more sep­a­rate before they can reach their intend­ed des­ti­na­tion of the stun­ning Iguazu falls, a nat­ur­al won­der that serves as an elu­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the hap­pi­ness that the weak-willed Lai seeks to redis­cov­er when he inevitably rec­on­ciles with the wild and promis­cu­ous Ho.

The more we see of these two inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed yet utter­ly inhar­mo­nious men squab­bling in their cramped and drea­ry flat, the more we sus­pect that this longed-for peri­od of rela­tion­ship bliss exists only in the mind, either as an unre­li­able rec­ol­lec­tion of the past or as a des­per­ate dream of what will nev­er be. Much like in Wong’s exu­ber­ant 1994 film Chungk­ing Express, his frac­tured visu­al rhythms sug­gest the youth­ful, roman­tic rush of the moment fil­tered through mem­o­ry. Yet by apply­ing his impul­sive style to such joy­less scenes, Wong’s once jubi­lant meth­ods prove dev­as­tat­ing as they empha­sise the destruc­tive emo­tion­al short-sight­ed­ness of Lai and Ho.

Through this daz­zling hall-of-mir­rors arrange­ment, we see that their rela­tion­ship is an addic­tion that has passed the point where gen­uine plea­sure is even a fac­tor, replaced by some­thing more pri­mal and bit­ter­ly habit­u­al. The cou­ple are seen engaged in phys­i­cal com­bat more often than hav­ing sex but even their inter­course comes across as a vio­lent and fran­tic form of release. Unable to afford the trip back home from Argenti­na, Lai and Ho are both geo­graph­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly stuck in one place, and they have nowhere to direct their pent-up frus­tra­tion except at each other.

Part of what makes this couple’s con­tin­u­ing cycle of implo­sions and revivals so ago­nis­ing to wit­ness is the ongo­ing impres­sion through all the fight­ing, decep­tion and pas­sive-aggres­sive attacks that there remains a pro­found, unspo­ken lev­el of under­stand­ing between Lai and Ho. Were it tru­ly pos­si­ble for the two of them to start fresh, it’s easy to imag­ine this inti­mate bond as a basis for com­fort and affec­tion, rather than anger and dis­trust. We sense that both par­ties are pri­vate­ly aghast at the ugly cesspool of jeal­ousy and hos­til­i­ty that their rela­tion­ship in real­i­ty has become.

Sad­ly, there is no escap­ing the long his­to­ry of emo­tion­al bag­gage that Lai and Ho have accu­mu­lat­ed – both as a con­flict­ing cou­ple and as inter­nal­ly con­flict­ed indi­vid­u­als – and so this his­to­ry con­tin­ues to imbue the air between them with unshake­able ten­sion. In its poignant but opti­mistic final third, Hap­py Togeth­er final­ly reveals itself as a sto­ry of renew­al and repair after all. How­ev­er, it is a per­son­al renew­al expe­ri­enced only by the indi­vid­ual who can learn to let go of what’s bro­ken, despite all they’ve invest­ed of them­selves into fix­ing it.

In Wong Kar-wai’s most uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly sour work, the rela­tion­ship is a flam­ing, unsal­vage­able wreck for which the only ratio­nal response is to back away and let it burn itself to the ground. It’s a tes­ta­ment to the film’s sharp emo­tion­al per­cip­i­ence that we can under­stand and empathise with the desires and delu­sions of the two peo­ple who have become so blind­ly attached to this ruinous shell of a romance.