MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai directs the strange, intimate drama Cheun Gwong Tsa Sit (Happy Together). Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle employed multiple film speeds and different color film stock during the shooting. Ho (Leslie Cheung) and Lai (Tony Leung) are lovers from Hong Kong who have run away to live in Buenas Aires, Argentina. However, Ho is immature and unwilling to settle down, which makes Lai depressed. When they break up, Lai works as a doorman in a tango bar in order to save money and go home. The restless Ho becomes a prostitute. After Ho is beaten and injured in an attack, Lai takes him to his apartment to recover. Ho tries to rekindle the romance, but Lai isn't interested. He leaves the tango bar and works in a kitchen, where he meets the young Chang (Chang Chen) from Taiwan. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Theatre Wide Screen)
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Subtitle: English
• Features:
  • • "Buenos Aires Zero Degrees" (1999, 59 min, color, in Cantonese with optional English subtitles) - a fascinating and revealing documentary about Wong Kar-Wai and the making of Happy Together
    • A Wong Kar-Wai trailer gallery
    • Stills gallery
    • Filmographies
    • A print interview with Wong Kar-Wai
    • Optional English subtitles
    • Enhanced for 16x9 TVs

AWARDS

• Cannes Film Festival

•     Won Best Director - 1997 (Wong Kar-Wai)

• Hong Kong Film Awards

•     Nominated Best Picture - 1997

• Independent Spirit Awards

•     Nominated Best Foreign Film - 1997 (Wong Kar-Wai)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Wong Kar-Wai

• Producer:

  Wong Kar-Wai, Chang Ye-cheng

• Screenwriter:

  Wong Kar-Wai

• Cinematographer:

  Christopher Doyle

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Danny Chung

• Editor:

  William Chang, Wong Ming-lam

• Production Designer:

  William Chang

• Executive Producer:

  Wong Kar-Wai

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Leung Chi-Tat, Tu Duu-chih

• First Assistant Director:

  Johnny Kong

REVIEW:

• Wong Kar-wai at his most lyrical and mannered, Happy Together is a voluptuously photographed meditation on love and loneliness. Employing the same off-the-cuff direction and dazzling visual style of his landmark Chungking Express (thanks to ace cinematographer Christopher Doyle), Wong gives Happy Together a similarly loose structure, though it is a darker, more melancholy film. Like characters in a Samuel Beckett play, the Hong Kongese gay couple stranded far from their native land and at the end of their rope recognizes the destructive, ultimately doomed nature of their relationship, but they cannot quite bring themselves to break their bonds. Happy Together gained notoriety for its frank portrayal of homosexuality, resulting in its getting banned in Singapore, among other places. Though this long taboo subject was slowly being broached by such art house directors as Tsai Ming-liang and Stanley Kwan, few films dealt with Chinese male sexuality as directly (and as graphically) as Wong did here. Both male leads, Leslie Cheung and the sad-eyed Tony Leung Chiu Wai, give brilliant, fearless performances. Happy Together is an utterly romantic, deeply moving film that continues to haunt the viewer long after the credits have rolled. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi