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Summary: A movie about love, maturity, displacement & filmic wonders.
Review: This is one of those terrific films that is about much more than it shows, a movie that is so gloriously, rapturously, intensely cinematic at its core that a literal recap of its narrative line misses the point, if not altogether betrays it. Two young Hong Kong men are lovers breaking up in Buenos Aires. One is a gigolo, the other takes dreary jobs as a doorman and in an abbatoir to support them. The "responsible" one meets another young emigre from the Orient (Taipei) and they become good, platonic friends who discuss their tramping around the world and how life will be when they "grow up." The lovers finally break up in Argentina and the "responsible" one returns to Hong Kong, ready to get on with his life. That's what this movie shows you. Ah, but it's a great movie, so, what it shows you is only half as important, if that, as HOW it shows you what it shows you. Adopting what one might call the "collage-ist" aesthetic of the 90s, "Happy Together" shows you tortured people caught in the complex tumbril of their lives, people weaving like drunks in and out of their various contexts so that, by the film's end, you have a wonderful idea of who they are...how they look and sound and smell and why they matter. Using very different approaches to black-and-white and color cinematograpy, pop music and classic tango, jump-frame camera movement and stable framing, in other words, a sensationally eclectic cinematic vocabulary, "Happy Together" stuns and arouses you, not with the potential prurience of its lovers' homosexual affair, but with the solipsistic intensity of life among today's generation of young airplane arabs, creating the spectacle of people engulfed in an ongoing state of self-imposed cognitive dissonance and social estrangement, people whose concept of "home" grows ever weaker as they tramp from setting to setting in extreme contrast with what home ever was, or could be, for them, only to emerge with an appetite for meaning. It's about the dawn of maturity worlds away from where one first began growing up. And if this "explanation" of this movie sounds dull or confusing, well, that's how it should be. My inadequacies as a writer aside, "Happy Together" is a film and its theme suits its form and none other. So pop this lollipop of a movie in your mouth and enjoy modern moviemaking at its most immediate and provocative.
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Summary: perfect
Review: This movie is a chef d 'oeuvre . A story of love and hate between two lovers in no man s land .
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Summary: Excellent piece of avant garde cinema! MUST SEE
Review: This movie is so finely done and original! Wong Kar-Wai makes movies like you've never seen. If you miss this one you're cheating yourself. The mis-en-scene will absolutely blow you to pieces!
Rating: 
Summary: Not in the Mood
Review: This movie tries to present deep, complex and intriguing characters but that pretension ends up delivering a flat, tedious and emotionally empty story. The plot focuses the relationship of two gay men, their co-dependence and the everyday struggles they must face, most of them with each other.
It coul be interesting if the characters weren`t so distant and devoid of any life or worthwile qualities. Instead, they turn into shallow, selfish people that only add to a slow and lifeless movie. Director Wong Kar-Wai ("Fallen Angels", "In The Mood For Love") delivers some stylish, beautiful images with creative camera angles and an engaging use of lightning, but it doesn`t help much since the story itself drags on and on and fails to captivate one`s attention. Some pretty and original details aside, "Happy Together" is a long, boring and useless waste of film. Disposable.
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Summary: Wider Is Not Always Better
Review: This review is much more about the crummy VHS "wide screen" format of this film than the movie itself. Unfortunately I never got to enjoy this piece on the silver screen; I wish I had. In VHS it's frustratingly painful. What seems like the top fifth and the bottom fifth of my TV screen go unused; blacked out; wasted. Of course this is ostensibly the bane of converting (i.e., cropping) 70mm film down to VHS. Yet if the bottom fifth of my screen could have been adapted somehow to accommodate the subtitles (instead of these cluttering up the remaining, already hypercompressed 3-fifths of the screen) that would have been perhaps at least partially redemptive. As it stands however "Happy Together" on VHS won't make any viewer too happy.Concerning the plot itself of the film now, if you're looking for a deeply moving gay love story, I never quite felt it here. There's precious little passion or compassion evinced betwixt our primary protagonists. The far-too-fleet, almost token love-making scene in the beginning of the film leaves us begging for much, much more which alas, never comes to pass. Too bad. Or maybe I was just so bummed out by the VHS problem to enjoy "Happy Together" in a manner it more fittingly deserves. Is it possible the DVD-formatted version isn't fraught with such shortcomings as I've described? One can only hope so.
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Summary: Tango Blues
Review: Well, the texture of this film is familiar; it's very Wong Kar Wai, and I wasn't so much impressed by the style of the film as by the content. If you want style, In the Mood for Love is probably the summit of Wong's talent, not Happy Together. I read somewhere that Wong was interested in doing a film about a gay couple, a theme that is currently in vogue in worldwide film. Except, Wong wanted a twist or a stark examination of relationships whose nature is the same irrespect of sexual orientation. Happy Together evokes the masochism, the enslavement, and darkness of relationships between two people who are somehow just incompatible. Even though Fai and Ho are in love, they torture and tyrannize each other with vendettas of rejection, violence, abandonment, and feigned indifference. I find this an exceptional film that speaks a deep, dark truth that most people are afraid to confront and overcome. After seeing the performances of the actors and the all too truthful content of the film, I wholeheartedly agree that Wong won his Best Director award at Cannes resplendently fair and square.
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Summary: its a waterfall experience
Review: Won kar wai makes it still worth to believe in cinema as an art. This movie speeks for itself. Its a masterpiece. There's a good director, a blend of great photography actors direction, music, camera, silences. We are faced with a real and pure cinematographic language. And while all this is going on there's also a story beautifull taking place.
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Summary: Wow
Review: Wong does it again. The film is soso painful to watch. Yet again he seduces u into continuing with the film to its conclusion. There are some of the most heart wrenching scenes in modern cinema within this film. Wong is easily the greatest writer/director working in cinema today. Chris Doyle show himself yet again as one of the best DP's working in the industry too. Brilliant, sad, funny, sexy and helpful.
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Summary: Wong Kar Wai's Greatest Work
Review: Wong Kar-Wai has abandoned the whimisical romantic trappings of his previous films (i.e. Chungking Express and Fallen Angels) and created a slower-paced, and more introspective film with an astonishing emotional and visceral depth. To describe the plot would be pointless, as the film forgoes conventional story-telling narrative in favor of painting moods and depicting emotions. The film (much of it set in Argentina) creates a haunting sense of loneliness and isolation while exploring the main character's (played by Hong Kong star Tony Leung) rocky relationship with his lover, his futile crush on a younger man, and his distaste for his surroundings. The film isn't completely sad, though, as the end of the film is remarkably uplifting. Much of the credit for this film should also go to cinematographer Christopher Doyle for creating such a visually dazzling film.
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Summary: Absolute Brilliance
Review: Wong Kar-Wai is a man of incredible vision and style. He will amuse you with brilliant, liquid, and playful colours, all the while saturating you in the misery of this dying relationship between these two men. He brings about a starkness as Po-Wing manipulates and abuses Yui-fai making him into almost a dog-like creature serving his every whim. The talent and sheer magnificence of this film shows in almost every frame. It is a wonderful and torturious journey of the heart, mind, and soul. One that almost all of us have to make at some point in our lives.
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