Pair production (4/4/01)
____________
Happy Together. [Wong Kar Wai, 1997.]
The title does come from the Turtles, and this is, as one might expect from Wong, a love story in a minor key: a couple of guys from Hong Kong [Tony Leung earnest, committed, jealous; Leslie Cheung more than a bit of a tart] take off for Argentina together, run out of money, split up, get back together, and split up again; the while working in Buenos Aires at a weird variety of bad jobs [Leung works clubs, kitchens, and finally ends up on the night shift in a slaughterhouse; Cheung seems to be some kind of hooker] trying to put together the price of a ticket back. The fact that they’re [almost exactly] on the other end of the world from China is not insignificant; nor should it escape our notice that the focus of the story is Leung’s determination to visit the most unurban [and, therefore, relative to Hong Kong, antipodean] place he can imagine, the famous Iguazu Falls; when he finally succeeds, the movie and the love story are over.
With Chang Chen [Zhang Ziyi’s love interest in
Crouching Tiger] as a third party to the [still essentially bipolar] relationship. — This is the film that won Wong the Best Director award at Cannes in 1997. Not, I suspect, his last such honor. Check it out.
____________Cut and paste (4/1/01)
