6 May 2018
“Happy Together (春光乍洩)”---Singapore Chinese Film Festival
Release Year: 1997
Country: Hong Kong, Japan, Korea
Director: Wong Kar-wai（王家卫）
Cast: Leslie Cheung（张国荣）, Tony Leung Chiu-wai（梁朝伟）, Chang Chen（张震）
Location I watched: Capitol Theatre
The 6th Singapore Chinese Film Festival (SCFF) was held from 27 April to 6 May. The festival picked Chinese language films from not only Mainland China but also other areas like Southeast Asia. For the retrospective section, this year featured a Hong Kong actor, Leslie Cheung, who passed away at the age of 46 in 2003. Actually I am not a fan of Leslie, but eventually I watched 3 out of 4 films featuring him during the Festival. This film, “Happy Together” was the closing film of SCFF this year. The venue was Capitol Theatre. This beautiful restored heritage building was fit for Leslie Cheung, one of the most gorgeous Hong Kong stars. The screening had a good crowd. About 900 seats in Capitol Theatre were almost full. I realized then how popular Leslie is still… When SCFF programmed the retrospective of a director King Hu, everybody did not come. How come? The King Hu retrospective was very good and I really enjoyed it… I resented this situation a little bit. Anyway, “Happy Together” crowd was diverse; young ladies, not so young ladies, gay couples and cinephiles and so on. At the venue, I bumped into a film friend. He was interested in “Happy Together” because he could not watch this film when it was first screened in Singapore back in 1998. “Happy Together” is rated at R21 in Singapore… Even if I had been in Singapore in 1998, I could have watched this film without any issues.... The 1990s felt recent for me; it is like just 5 years ago. In fact, it is more than 2 decades. 1990s has already become a part of history.
I do not know why I did not go to watch “Happy Together” when it was first released in Japan. Maybe Wong Kar-wai was very popular at that time in Japan. I used to be a bit of a twisted youngster. Or maybe I did not like the plot of 2 beautiful male stars being a gay couple. To me, it felt like flattering female audience. I used to be a quite twisted youngster. After I missed the original screening in the cinema, I did not have any other chance to watch this film. Sometimes this happens. I think it must be a destiny between me and the film. On the other hand, there are some films I have seen many times, although I do not have a strong interest. For example, I have seen Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Pigsty” two times in the cinema. 1st time was in Japan and 2nd time was in Singapore. Each time I finished watching it, I always thought that I did not like this film very much. Maybe it is a destiny between me and “Pigsty”.
Anyway, this time around, the destiny between me and “Happy Together” came together. I suddenly felt like watching this film and bought a ticket at the last minute. In 2018, I watched this film with a fairer heart. It was a good film. The storyline was clearer than what I had expected. Actually the story is simple. A gay couple is just repeating fighting and bonding. Lai (played by Tony Leung) and Ho (played by Leslie Cheung), they travelled to Argentina from Hong Kong to “start over”. On the halfway of the trip, they used up all their money, and now they are stuck in Buenos Aires. The protagonist, Lai cannot escape from his femme fatale boyfriend, Ho (for me, the protagonist is Lai, not Ho). However, Lai finally decides to leave him and departs from Buenos Aires alone. To make this simple story interesting, one of the important elements is how Ho played by Leslie Cheung is a diva. Because of that, the relationship between Lai and Ho is sometimes funny and sometimes painful. They are connected so thick that it attracts the audience and drags into their story.
On the other hand, the third man, Chang (played by Chang Chen) is like the character of Wong Kar-wai’s films in my memory. Unlike Lai and Ho living their life on the screen, Chang rather seems to embody a mood, which Wong Kar-wai creates. I used to feel that the mood was very like the 1990’s. When I was young, I did not like that point so much because it was too cool for me. In “Happy Together”, the mood of loneliness in a metropolis is beautifully created. The images coloured the film let us feel like having something metaphoric. In there, even a lame jacket Tony Leung is wearing magically looks cool. The story happening from an intimate relationship, and the mood with suggestive images---“Happy Together” is a film created between narrative and non-narrative. The film is attractively drifting between them and has become an unforgettable one.
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| The venue, Capitol Theatre, it is like a building in a Wong Kar-wai's film |
By the way, I was impressed by Lay’s vitality to earn money in a foreign country. If I were him, I do not think I could save money and go back to Hong Kong. (5 July 2018)
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| The entrance of Capitol Theatre |
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