♥♥♥♥♥
+ 2nd Best Movie of the Year
+ Best Buenos Aires Movie of the Year + Best On-Screen Couple of the Year: Tony Leung & Leslie Cheung + Best Rainbow Movie of the Year + Best Romance of the Year
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| A scene of love from the film is used on this lovely poster for Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together. - This poster was banned in Hong Kong |
In a spartan apartment in Buenos Aires, two Hong Kong expats live as a couple, who love but also argue and combat each other and their lives as gay foreigners far from home.
Happy Together is written and directed by Chinese master filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai (As Tears Go By/Wong Gok ka moon (1988)), adapting The Buenos Aires Affair (1973) by Manuel Puig (Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976)).
It is a rarely un-prettied up and intimate, authentic portrayal of love, and one that's more blue than red so to speak. Tony Leung (Lust, Caution/Se, jie (2007)) is excellent as our protagonist, who works as a doorman and later in a restaurant and struggles with his boyfriend's looseness and volatility.
SPOILER Intermingled with the heartaches lie beauty and new friendship, as the two break up. Happy Together is a deeply moving and precious depiction, at the same time playful, youthful and accomplished.
Related posts:
Wong Kar-Wai: The Grandmaster/一代宗師/一代宗师/Yīdài Zōngshī/Jat1 Doi6 Zung1 Si1/ (2013) - Visuals prevail in Kar-Wai's strange kung fu spectacle
My Blueberry Nights (2007) - A slice too cute
2046 (2004) - Kar-Wai's visually resplendent, empty hull of a movie
The 2000s in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Top 10: Best erotic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
2000 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
In the Mood for Love/花樣年華/faa1joeng6 nin4waa4/huāyàng niánhuá (2000) - Kar-Wai's delectable home run
1997 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Top 10: Best gay-themed titles
Chungking Express/重慶森林 (1994) - Kar-Wai's urban love drama is a visual treat
Watch a very short trailer for the film here
Cost: 4.2 mil. $
Box office: In excess of 1.9 mil. $
= Uncertain
[Happy Together premiered 17 May (Cannes Film Festival, in competition) and runs 96 minutes. Leung was lured to Argentina for the shoot with a fake script and was only then informed that he would have to do a gay sex scene in the film. Shooting took place in Argentina, including in Buenos Aires, Brazil, Hong Kong and in Taipei City, Taiwan. The film opened #21 to a 12k $ first weekend in 1 theater in North America, where it grossed 320k $. The film made 8.6 mil. $ HK, equal to approximately 1.1 mil. $. It was also released in many other markets, and the real total gross is regrettably not possible to ascertain but may likely be in the 2-4 mil. $ span. It has made at least 251k $ and 195k $ in re-release grosses in 2020 and 2021. It won the Best Director prize in Cannes and 1/9 Hong Kong Film awards, among other honors. Kar-Wai returned with a 1998 Motorola commercial and theatrically with In the Mood for Love/Fa yeung nin wah (2000). Leung returned in '97 Aces Go Places/Jui gaai paak dong: Jui gai paak dong (1997); Leslie Cheung (Viva Erotica/Sik ching nam lui (1996)) in Ninth Happiness/Gau sing bou hei (1998). Happy Together is fresh at 82 % with a 7.40/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Happy Together?
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