Happy Together Times Five

1. Changzhou, China

The first time I watched Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together was on my MP4 player’s five-inch screen, hidden beneath my quilt. Starring two A-list Sinosphere actors, the Cannes-winning film delivered a powerful shock - one that gave every coming-of-age Chinese gay boy a raw education in inaccessible love.

The film begins with the collapse of a couple’s honeymoon. What was intended to be a road trip to Iguaçu Falls goes awry. Two Hong Kong men, Lai Yiu-Fai and Ho Po-Wing, are stranded in Buenos Aires. Lai scrapes by being a doorman for a tango bar, while Po works as a midnight cowboy, only to return to Lai’s dingy one-room apartment, penniless and badly beaten, seeking truce with Lai.

I was still too young to fully grasp the intricate emotions and love’s push and pull depicted in the film, but that night, I dreamed of Iguaçu Falls.

2. Copenhagen, Denmark

I didn’t get to revisit Happy Together until almost a decade later. Jørgen and I watched it together at his flat.

“What do you like most about the film?” I asked him.

“The lamp as a thread of their love.”

Lai and Ho bought a glowing paper lamp, kitschy in a way, with a colorful painting of the majestic Iguaçu Falls on its shade. Enticed by it, they had planned to visit the falls upon arriving in Buenos Aires. However, after losing their direction, money, and relationship, the lamp becomes a bittersweet time capsule of their imagined honeymoon.

“The idea of two Asian exiles struggling with their break-ups in different ways in a Spanish-speaking continent is also very new and fascinating,” Jørgen continued.

“Exiles? More like immigrants or expatriates…” I might have been offended by his choice of words, likely because of my own status as an expat in his country. I was overly sensitive when it came to transnationalism.

I met Jørgen at a work party, where we initially debated Dogme 95 and later discovered our shared obsession with Wong Kar-Wai’s melancholy dramas. We were passing by each other’s lives briefly; we knew each other pretty well; we knew nothing about each other.

Jørgen’s flat was near Søerne Lake. Through the thick air as I gazed out that night, I could faintly see the lake’s water flowing like China ink, against the dim lights glowing from the old city center. Copenhagen is a place where you feel lonely too easily.

3. Vancouver, Canada

Alejandro and I moved into our Gastown apartment at the height of the pandemic. Happy Together was the first film we watched there. Alejandro is Mexican; he likes frying cacti as snacks before watching something.

During one of the few happy moments Lai and Ho share after making up, Ho teaches Lai how to dance, moving to the melancholic notes of Astor Piazzolla’s “Tango Apasionado,” turning a squalid communal kitchen into their quasi-honeymoon.

“So… are we happy together?” After the film, Alejandro asked me with a nervous smirk.

“I think so.”

Gastown is a strange neighborhood, full of trendy shops and homeless crowds. Our anticipation of life in Gastown slowly faded amidst that chaos. Together, Alejandro and I livened up the empty apartment, bought each piece of the furniture we liked, then we eventually emptied it again.

When I sentimentally reminisce, he always laughs and says we always had those days in us, and that all we lost was the continuity.

4. San Diego, the USA

Lev is a dear friend, but he lives far away in California, and we only see each other once a year.

We talk on the phone often, though. Once, while I was working on a deadline, he was watching Happy Together with his girlfriend, we kept the call open. The soundtrack and fragmented dialogue drifted from San Diego to me.

Lai Yiu-Fai: “Hey! What do you think you’re doing… You have your own bed…”

Ho Po-Wing: “我鍾意呀 / I like it!”

Later, Lev texted: “I like the literal translation of Happy Together better — 春光乍泄 / A Sudden Burst of Spring.”

5. Vancouver, Canada

When I returned to Vancouver after moving to the States, I stumbled upon the Cinematheque showing a restored 4K version of Happy Together. There was no reason not to step inside.

“Let’s start over” - Ho Po-Wing’s mantra, a lethal incantation that forever drew Lai Yiu-Fai into endless loops of separation, pain, and temporary reconciliation.

“I feel sad. There should be two of us standing here,” Lai said. By the film’s end, Lai stood before Iguaçu Falls alone - his slim, solitary silhouette overwhelmed by the belittling grandeur of the falls, cascading like a thousand roaring floods from the sky. However, Iguaçu - once the long-desired honeymoon destination - lost its magic when it revealed its physical form, no longer just an over-saturated print on Ho’s rotating lampshade. The essence of a honeymoon lies not in its place-ness, but in the shared dream of it with someone.

MINUTE 04:31
Lai: “¿Dónde es Iguaçu?”

A honeymoon is, by nature, ephemeral. It is a fleeting thought that flows across the map of your mind; it is a momentary intimacy between one human and another. I keep wondering, how often do we truly get the chance to start over?

Walking alone on Vancouver’s streets, the spoken words of my past fade into silence - my Iguaçu Falls torrents restlessly through the uncharted dreamscape of Argentina; don’t cry for me.