Title
Happy Together is a Hong Kong romantic movie directed by Wong Kai-wai. The movie depicts an intricate relationship between Lai Yiu-fai and Ho Po-wing while setting Argentina as the background. The film’s title, “Happy Together,” is interesting since neither of the words has anything to do with the film’s content or ending. With each reunion of Lai and Ho, there’s always tons of pain and tension between them. There is a third character named Zhang Wan, who enters the story later and becomes Lai’s friend. The title serves as an ideal goal that they never achieve. At the beginning of the film, they are an ordinary couple driving a car, going to visit the beautiful fall. However, the journey is embedded with several separations, and in the end, they ultimately break up, which is not expected, as the title indicates. While many people consider this an ironic title, the director stated that the title implies a person or two people’s inner peace; the peace within a person’s self indicates the start of a happy relationship and a more open possibility of the future [Wong 1997].
Road trip
Happy Together is different from a traditional road trip movie we have watched, such as The Living End, in which most scenes happened on the highway, in the motels, etc. In Happy Together, the physical trip is not the main focus of the narrative, though the characters travel from Hong Kong to Argentina, transfer between different sites in Argentina, and then return to Taiwan. Instead, the story emphasizes the meaning of the travel more and the inner development of the characters. Compared with other road trip movies we have watched, there are some whose ending cycles into the beginning forming a loop like My Own Private Idaho, or the ones having a clear beginning and ending of the trip like Y tu mamá también; the road trip in Happy Together is very broken, and the film entails more on the stories and relationship development happening between the trips. For the psychological part, there are a lot of narrative and screening techniques reflecting the mental development that Lai and Ho go through. The physical one acts more like a platform to show the transitions of the character’s inner mind. There are three destinations that appear in the movie, and they indicate different mindsets. One is the Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse. Zhang visits this place with the radio player, which records Lai’s sound. The lighthouse is the southernmost lighthouse in the world, not far from the South Pole, and it is famous for being the end of the world. A hidden question that the director tries to ask is, “What is after the end of the world”? It is very interesting that after this scene, the camera returns to Lai, who returns to Taiwan, Zhang’s hometown and one of the destinations. There. Lai understands why Zhang is happy to be traveling around when he sees the pictures of Zhang and his family when visiting the small restaurant that Zhang’s parents run. This connection of the scenes leads to a discussion of community and identity seeking. This is also a good comparison to Lai’s conversations with his father, which are full of aggression. The other destination is the Iguazu Fall, which Lai and Ho want to visit together before they leave Hong Kong, but in the end, only Lai goes to see the fall. When Lai stands there, he says there are supposed to be two people under the fall, which is a way to say goodbye to Ho and to this relationship.
Start over
One crucial sentence that we hear a lot is starting over. As Lai stated, whenever he hears “Let’s start over” from Ho, he always goes back to Ho and begins a new relationship. However, every reunion between them, though smooth and peaceful at the beginning, is filled with arguments and fights and always ends. A cyclical nature is exhibited in this relationship. One thing mentioned by Rojas in his movie analysis is “repetition compulsion,” which is a neurotic condition in which the subjectivity will continue and repeat the unresolved trauma [Rojas 2015]. This corresponds to the broken storyline between Lai and Ho, which is not only a toxic relationship between them but also a reflection of their seeking for identities in a foreign country. One thing noticeable is the relationship between Lai and his father. According to the phone call, we can tell that Lai is not being cared for much by his family; his role in this relationship with Ho makes him act like a caregiver. This reflects the repetition compulsion defined by Freud in Rojas’s paper. Lai is not only trying to fix the traumatic relationship with Ho but also the traumatic relationship within his family.
The “starting over” between Lai and Ho can be expanded to a broader area in queer cinema about temporal disruption. Queer cinema challenges the conventional narrative and temporalities to reflect the undefined nature of identity [Borden 2016]. The breakups and reunion between Lai and Ho make many people feel uncomfortable, and it is very hard to define such a relationship. In the end, Lai and Ho completely break up, and one goes back, and the other remains in Argentina. The question is, does this account as a bad ending, especially under the discussion of the title “Happy Together.” The repetition compulsion states that they are experiencing an unresolved traumatic event again and again. Breaking up is a better result for them based on this assumption. The narrative and the ending of the film question the traditional or the stereotype that people consider a queer film.
Home and Identity
The other theme in the film is the search for a home and identity. One prominent line is the feeling of belonging when Lai and Ho are away from home. Argentina is on the opposite side of Hong Kong on Earth. The initial scene describing Hong Kong uses an inverted view and transitions into an upright view when arriving in Argentina, which indicates the characters are physically far away from their home. They are experiencing something that is completely new and away from their familiar, safe places. There is a deep sense of nostalgia. Stepping away from this physical displacement, the notion of home is also a place where the person’s identity is accepted, which can be related to the family and friend relationship. The reliance and reunion of Lai and Ho give them a feeling of company and agreement. Besides the traumatic repetition, they also have these belongings that bring them together. In Jagose’s book talking about queer theory, he describes homosexual as a way of being in the world [Jagose 2010]. The analogy describing the homosexual indicate the marginality of the queer community. Near the end of the story, Lai meets and works with Zhang for a while; from this point, Lai never goes back to Ho. A complete breakup happens, which has been interpreted as a move-on due to this new relationship. However, instead of describing it as a sexual desire or appreciation, there is a closeness of identity between Lai and Zhang, which sets the foundation for Lai to go back to Taiwan first, not Hong Kong. In Taiwan, he figured out the underlines supporting Zhang and took away a picture of Zhang. An interesting question is whether he recalls the memory that he is finding an identity on Zhang or just a souvenir of this short friendship.
Bibliography
Happy Together. Directed by Wong, Kar-wai, Jet Tone Production Block 2 Pictures Seowoo Film Company Prénom H Co. Ltd., 1997
Wong, Kar-wai (27 October 1997). “Exclusive Interview” (Interview). Interviewed by Khoi Lebinh; David Eng. WBAI.
Rojas, Carlos. “Queer Utopias in Wong Kar‐Wai’s Happy Together.” A Companion to Wong Kar‐wai, 5 Nov. 2015, pp. 508–521, doi:10.1002/9781118425589.ch23.
Borden, Amy. “Queer or LGBTQ+: On the Question of Inclusivity in Queer Cinema Studies.” The Routledge Companion to Cinema & Gender, 2016.
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