Reel Queer: Happy Together

Directed by Wong Kar-Wai
Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Leslie Cheung, Chang Chen

One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung as a couple traveling through Argentina and locked in a turbulent cycle of infatuation and destructive jealousy as they break up, make up, and fall apart again and again. Setting out to depict the dynamics of a queer relationship with empathy and complexity on the cusp of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong—when the country’s LGBT community suddenly faced an uncertain future—Wong crafts a feverish look at the life cycle of a love affair that’s by turns devastating and deliriously romantic.

Our Take
‘A couple’s tempestuous relationship is pushed to the breaking point during an ill-fated trip to see the Iguazu Falls, which leaves them stranded in Argentina. Hong Kong cultural icons Tony Leung (Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Hard Boiled) and Leslie Cheung (A Better Tomorrow, Farewell My Concubine) shine in Wong Kar-wai’s melancholy masterpiece of estrangement and the fleeting intimacies which puncture it.’

Join us in The Kitchen after the film for a relaxed post-screening discussion.