Rating: 
Summary: Personified co-dependency...
Review: Another remarkable story by Kar-wai Wong that depicts two men on a trip to Argentina where they get stranded due to financial difficulties and their turbulent relationship. In their relationship they have acquired a certain dependency upon each other, which seems to be emotionally, financially, and physically draining on them both. Despite this abusive relationship, their co-dependency forces them back together and the circle seems to be sealed forever, until one of men meets another man who has the ability to listen. Happy Together is a film about everything in a relationship except being happy together, which provides an emotionally apprehensive cinematic experience that can be compared to Ingmar Bergman's pictures.
Rating:
Summary: Personified co-dependency...
Review: Another remarkable story by Kar-wai Wong that depicts two men on a trip to Argentina where they get stranded due to financial difficulties and their turbulent relationship. In their relationship they have acquired a certain dependency upon each other, which seems to be emotionally, financially, and physically draining on them both. Despite this abusive relationship, their co-dependency forces them back together and the circle seems to be sealed forever, until one of men meets another man who has the ability to listen. Happy Together is a film about everything in a relationship except being happy together, which provides an emotionally apprehensive cinematic experience that can be compared to Ingmar Bergman's pictures.
Rating:
Summary: an amazing multicultural trip to the human core
Review: As an Argentine i was touched by Wong's incisive portrayal of Buenos Aires's rythm and contradictions. He places two immigrants whose love affair is falling appart in an unknown country, selecting the situations with the skill of a master. The capitvating story unravels their miseries, fears and desires paired with the most creative cinematography. This is a real jewel, and one of my favorite movies of the decade.
Rating:
Summary: Converted Me
Review: Believe it or not, after swearing off Wong's film because of In the Mood for Love, this film brought me back into his fold. First of all, I do realise a bit of the significance and nuances of a gay life and gay relatinship may have been lost on me. There was no explantion of the significance of things, it just assumes you know the sub-culture in which the main characters live. So for a non-participant of such a sub-culture or psyche, it was intriguing for me to pick up the clues and hints of the greater sub-culture backdrop and particular psyche in which everything unfolds. I definitely have a better understanding and appreciation although definitely not a complete one. I was irritated with the characters initially but once understanding creeps in, empathy dawns. It will only be complex to those who do not understand, intriguing to those who gets a whiff of understanding and I am sure, beautiful for those whose stories are actually being told.
Rating:
Summary: The dream of being happy together
Review: Enough has been said about Wong Kar Wai's brilliant visual direction. It might be a little too much to say that he revolutionizes the state of world cinema as there is no such revolution in the recent years the way the French New Wave changed the look and image of the cinematic world in the 60s. However, you can definitely sense that the ambition is there. It takes courage to make a romantic gay film. It takes all the courage in the world to make a romantic Chinese gay film set in latin America. How many people in the world can actually say, 'hey, I can identify with this movie,' apart from its portrayal of love's imperfection. Unrequited love is a theme that is present in almost every Wong Kar Wai movie and it is amazing that at this point he has not worn the viewers down. It is his ability to deliver a somewhat new perspective with every film that keeps a fan like me coming back again and again to watch what he has to offer. This movie is no different. This movie has the two best actors that Hong Kong has to offer and they don't pull any punches here. The partnership between Wong with Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Leslie Cheung Kuo Rung stretches far back. It seems that Wong has the ability to draw the best out of these two actors. Tony Leung would go on to nab the Best actor award in the Cannes film festival with his role in 'In the Mood for Love,' another movie by Wong. Unfortunately, Leslie Cheung had been typecast as an effiminate leading man once too often that this movie does not showcase his acting prowess as much as it could be. This is perhaps one of the most romantic movie I have ever watched in the recent years. It would be a gross injustice to simply label this film as a gay flick. Wong will show you that love is universal regardless of ethicity, nationality or sexual orientation. As corny and preachy that might sound, you have to look at the odds (by the virtue of the character placements) the movie has to overcome to carry this message across. And when I still daydream about being able to catch a glimpse of the Iguacu Falls in its glory with my loved one, you can say that the movie has succeeded beyond all expectations.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible 'Love' Story
Review: First off, let me say that I don't really like Wong Kar-Wai for a number of reasons that I will not enumerate here. I think most of his work is pure kitsch. But whatever, Happy Together is one of the best movies I've seen in the last few years. It really is an incredible film, and one of the few films I've seen that deal with intimate relationships well (Vigo's L'Atalante -- though it is very different -- also comes to mind). Yes, it's about two gay men, but the dynamic of their relationship is universal. I make this point because I've read some critics who think Wong is making a point about the inherently masochistic nature of relationships between gay men. This is not the case; it's about all relationships, or at least one facet of all relationships. This movie reminds me a lot of the sort of relationships that exist in Proust's In Search of Lost Time. I don't know, I'm just rambling now, but this really is an incredible film and I can't recommend it enough. It's a beautiful, melancholy story and it's beautifully shot as well. It's just fantastic. See it now
Rating:
Summary: Changing perspectives...
Review: Happy Together, by Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai, is one of my all-time favourite movies, and - along with The Tango Lesson - one of the movies that has effected me the most. To me, HT is one of those (rare) art products that manage to combine formal beauty, intellectual sharpness and emotional depth all into one. I have watched HT many times, and each time I felt that it had a new meaning to convey. My impressions about this movie have therefore shifted with time, leading me not to a definite interpretation but to the knowledge that art - as life itself - can be looked at from different points of view. The story line is quite simple: two lovers leave Hong Kong and go to Argentina; once there, they argue so much they decide to break up; one of them (Ho Po-Wing) prostitutes himself, while the other (Lai-Yiu Fai) works in a tango-bar and virtuously puts money aside to return home; one day, chance unites them and for a short while they live happily together; inevitably, however, the friskier one becomes dissatisfied with their conjugal life; they separate again, and this time it's really the end. Needless to say, the movie's title - as light-hearted as it sounds - is actually quite deceiving: the two men's relationship turns out to be a rather "unhappy" one. The first few times I watched HT I couldn't help feeling disgusted by Ho Po-Wing's moral hideousness - I thought of him as the negative-model the movie meant to point the finger against. I thought the movie proved that although there are no "real heroes" some people do behave better than others, and that by self-discipline one could "redeem" one's soul... I thought the movie was about Aesthetics as a means of purification, as if Beauty could protect one from squalor. I admired Lai-Yiu Fai and mercilessly condemned Ho Po-Wing. I still admire Lai-Yiu Fai, of course, but I now feel I was too superficial in judging Ho Po-Wing. I see he's not the monster I made him out to be in the past: he's a victim of his own temperament, a person misfortunate to the point of being unable to grasp the good life offers him. In this, I feel he well portrays many homosexuals, who, I'm afraid, often let happiness slip out of their hands, perhaps because a sick environment has taught them not to "love" but to "want." In my opinion, not only are we "all the same when we feel lonely," as Lai-Yiu Fai puts it - that is: inclined to promiscuous sex - we're also "all the same" in that we are all constantly on the verge of self-inflicted unhappiness. Last time I watched HT, about a week ago, I got extremely sad, because I realised how easy it is for anyone to fall, and because through experience I've come to understand that so many of us are like Ho Po-Wing, damned to suffer the pains of degradation and solitude because of our "insatiability." We are taught that since we aren't attracted to someone of the opposite sex we are "bad" and have no values. Of course the effect of this is that we end up believing they are right. Thus, monogamy and fidelity become accessories, as tenderness and mutual support. To me, Happy Together is about all this.
Rating:
Summary: Another Wong Kar-Wai masterpiece
Review: Having seen all of Wong Kar-Wai's previous efforts, I have been waiting in anticipation for "Happy Together". And what a magnificent movie it was - both visually and emotionally. No one portrays loneliness, alienation and the pangs of love better than this director and his long-time cinematographer Christopher Doyle. From the opening scene of the blue-tinted Iguazu Falls to the final uproariously upbeat scene of a subway train zooming into its station to the strains of "Happy Together", there was never a dull moment; moments that range froms scenes of utter despair, to hysterical quarrels between gay lovers to humorously playful interludes. Scenes alternate between black-and-white and over-saturated color in tandem with the shifting emotions of sadness and happiness. It is a masterpiece of color, sound and emotions which only Wong Kar-Wai could have created.
Rating: 
Summary: murky disappointment
Review: Having seen three of Wong Kar-Wai's films (Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, In the Mood for Love), I have become a big fan, and was eagerly looking forward to this one, the last available in my video store. It turned out to be a big letdown -- indeed, before I checked the actual date, I thought it was an early precursor of his unique style (combined with seemingly extreme low budget). What I could distinguish of the plot and characters was at least mildly interesting, but that's the catch, "what I could distinguish" -- the film style and (VHS) print combined to make it very hard to figure out what was happening on the screen. The subtitles were especially hard (or impossible) to read. A lot can be blamed on the print, and I envy those reviewers who saw it in theaters, but even trying to look through that, the film seemed to have only touches of the trademark WKW style. It was interesting to see so much shot not just exterior but outdoors, under wide skies. [The WKW films I've seen were almost entirely interior, or at least enclosed (with the exception of the Cambodian scene in Mood for Love) -- even a motorcycle is ridden at night in a tunnel.] And WKW doesn't seem to do well with the wide open spaces. Maybe it is his not being on the familiar territory of Hong Kong (or Asia). But the style here did not develop the interest and momentum for me that it did in the other films mentioned. As to the plot, it was the usual theme of obsessive love, impossible love, and sad reflection on lost possibility. Yet their story doesn't grab me the way the others' do, I think because they are brought down by their own disfunction (and such extreme, almost clownish, disfunction)with little relation to events or societal expectation. It's like watching a habitual drunk driver wrap his car around a tree.
Rating:
Summary: the way life should be
Review: Here's a movie I can hardly imagine myself ever getting tired of. Though it is, indeed, the story of an unfortunate and - as it turns out - unhappy love affair, it is not just that: Happy together is a wonderful (and yet sad) fairytale about life and human nature. In this movie I saw the good and the bad that's in each one of us, the potential for happiness which so often succumbs to the stronger inclination to self-destruction, and yet the hope that in the end something good will come out of sorrow. There are no "real heroes" (is there really such a thing anyway?) in this movie, for - as Lai-Yiu Fai puts it - we're all the same when we feel lonely. But there are some differences between people... Though we are all likely to fall (sooner or later), only some of us seem to recognize the fall in time to rise, finding the will to smile and move on with dignity and self-acceptance, looking forward to life and its surprises (though they may be both good and bad). Awareness is a big issue in this movie, and it seems to me to be the most important difference between the two lovers: Lai-Yiu Fai seems to have a much deeper understanding of life and sex, as well as of the consequences each choice bears along. Ho Po-Wing only sees the surface of things and lives for today, thus making their being "happy together" nothing but a temporary illusion. In the end, Ho Po-Wing too seems to gain in awareness, and so maybe (though I'm inclined to think some people never change) there is hope for him as well. The point is, I think, that there is no difference between what you do and how you do it. How you do a thing (that is, with what attitude and degree of awareness) obscures what you do to such an extent that the latter is no longer relevant at all. Lai reaches the bottom of his personal hell and finds he isn't so different from Ho after all, even though he had told his friend more than once "I'm not like you." So why do we sympathize for Lai and inevitably feel Ho is behaving badly? Is it the money factor? Personally, I don't think so, 'cause sure it's hard to approve of someone who, so to speak, exchanges sex with money, but if Lai too had decided to become a hustler we still would have teamed up with him. The fact is, he seems to be so conscious of his weakness, of his need to be "happy together," and yet so disillusioned, that his deviancies from his usual conduct - degrading as they may be - seem to contribute to his heroism rather than betray it. It's his honesty with himself (and us) that makes Lai a positive character, as opposed to Ho, who has something sneaky about him (then again, we are only provided with Lai's point of view: he speaks to us, Ho does not. I wonder if maybe his truth was different from his friend's...). Lai's dignity remains intact throughout the movie, and to me he really symbolizes honesty's redemptive force. His interpretation of his own actions (which surfaces through his many monologues) makes everything he does seem beautiful, and therefor right. This movie is a lot about esthetics. It is so as regards human relationships, and it is more so cinematically. What could have been an "already seen" love-story with an inevitable unhappy ending, is turned into a work of art, in my opinion a real masterpiece, by the beautiful photography and the director's brilliant ideas. Modernistic techniques come together beautifully in this movie, conveying emotions that otherwise would not arise. The visionary beauty of this film is what makes it morally edifying and what makes anyone who sees it stop and reflect upon a lot more than just the meaning of the movie. Words, images and music all balance out perfectly, urging the spectator to think "this is real life," or at least "this is the way real life should be."
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