I have heard a lot of praise for Wong Kar Wai’s works so when I learned that  his film Happy Together would be shown as part of the Pink Film Festival, I jumped at the chance to watch this highly-acclaimed film.  It was my first time to watch a movie at the newly opened Gateway Mall in Cubao last Saturday (June 11) and the price of admission (P120) was worth it.

The movie premiered way back in 1997 at the Cannes Film Festival, where it garnered a Best Director Award for Wong. It’s not hard to understand why it won since the film was very innovative in its use of black and white as well as color scenes to depict the various highlights of the story.

The film opens with a literal act of sexual penetration, as Lai Yiu-Fai (Tony Leung) sodomizes Ho Po-Wing (Leslie Cheung), and ends with a rapid tracking shot taken inside a train as it catapults Lai into a station as he begins his journey home.

The underlying theme of Happy Together is that of renewal, the chance to start over again. Two gay lovers are involved in a love-hate relationship and they are struggling to make sense of their feelings for each other while living in Buenos Aires. They both originally planned to see the Iguazu Falls together but only Lai got to see it, which only made him pine for his lover more. The aerial view of the waterfalls was very stunning and was for me, the highlight of the movie.

For a movie that is entitled Happy Together, I find it very ironic that the two did not end up together and that most of the time, these two lovers were fighting and getting angry at each other.