Classic Hong Kong movie Happy Together, 25 years on: Wong Kar-wai on his Cannes-winning gay romance, starring Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung
- Happy Together was a Hong Kong story set in Argentina, Wong said, but had little in common with the gay-themed films that were starting to appear in the city
- Tony Leung was thrown by the sex scene he had to perform, worried about what his mother would think. He did the scene, but demanded he kept his underwear on
On May 17, 1997, Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Released in Hong Kong cinemas right before the handover from Britain to China, the film charts the demise of the relationship of a gay couple who have relocated from Hong Kong to Argentina.
As the director mentioned in an interview with this writer just before the film’s debut at Cannes in 1997, there are some surprises. The colours slide from black and white into a burnished, saturated look, and one scene is even shot upside-down.
Wong won the prize for Best Director at Cannes, but he was less fortunate at home, where the opening sex scene between Leung and Cheung garnered the film a category III certificate, severely limited its audience. Wong later said he could have re-cut the film to avoid the rating, but didn’t want to compromise its integrity.
Back in 1997, Wong’s style was the most talked-about aspect of his work, and the previous year had seen a stream of Hong Kong films copying his handheld camerawork, slow-motion punctuation marks and philosophical voice-overs.
