Happy Together

UPC: 738329063023

Studio: Kino

MPAA Rating: NR   Contains:[Nudity, Adult Situations, Strong Sexual Content, Not For Children, Profanity]

Summary: 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

Category: Romance

Awards: Best Picture – Hong Kong Film Awards Best Director – Cannes Film Festival Best Foreign Film – Independent Spirit Awards

Features: "Beunos Aires Zero Degrees" (1999, 59 Min.) a documentary on the making of Happy Together
Wong Kar-Wai at the Museum of the Moving Image (2008, 44 min.)
Trailers
Stills gallery
Remastered from a new HD film transfer

Happy Together

Format: DVD

Release Date: 03/31/2009

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Theatre Wide-Screen

Audio: DD5.1 Dolby Digital 5.1

Runtime: 97 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Subtitles: English

Chapters: Disc #1 -- Happy Together
1. Opening Titles [2:32]
2. Road Trip [3:35]
3. The Waterfall [1:25]
4. The Tango Bar [5:34]
5. Finding One Another [2:50]
6. The Watch [4:43]
7. Wounds to Heal [4:47]
8. The Caretaker [6:46]
9. A Morning Chill [2:36]
10. Tango Lesson [3:13]
11. A Big Exit [1:08]
12. Kitchen Sounds [4:29]
13. Prowling and Prying [5:32]
14. Feeling the Void [5:06]
15. Things Withheld [5:04]
16. Adrift [4:53]
17. Listening Closely [6:52]
18. Picking Up [3:07]
19. The Confession [2:10]
20. Meat [3:56]
21. Last Dance [5:23]
22. Iguazu [2:31]
23. The End of the World [1:57]
24. Right Side Up [5:41]
1. Opening Titles [6:40]
2. Hungry for Details [9:44]
3. Lonely [9:25]
4. Sense of Time [13:47]
5. The Open Road [8:37]
6. Shirley Kwan [10:54]

Jonathan Crow

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

Cast and Crew: Wong Kar-Wai  Director 
Wong Kar-Wai  Executive Producer 
Wong Kar-Wai  Producer 
Wong Kar-Wai  Screenwriter 
Chang Ye-cheng  Producer 
Leslie Cheung  Actor 
Tony Leung Chiu-Wai  Actor 
Chang Chen  Actor 

Country: Hong Kong