Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together

The New Hong Kong Cinema

by Jeremy Tambling

This book shows two Chinese gay men in Buenos Aires and reflects on Hong Kong's past and future by probing masculinity, aggression, identity, and homosexuality. It also gives a reading of Latin America, perhaps as an allegory of Hong Kong as another post-colonial society.

Genres: Film

140 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 2003

Reviews

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book takes a subtle and sublime movie and imposes a host of its own crude readings onto it. I'm open to a pluralistic vision for the role of critics - sometimes critics help you see more detail, sometimes they place in historical context, and sometimes they provide a new, imaginative way of reading that that can delight in its novelty. Any of these can be done well, but Tambling shows us they can all be done poorly simultaneously.

While he claims to not want to dig into the actual history of the movie and instead simply want sto provide readings (7), he feels free to quote from and interviews with Wong Kar-Wai, and adopts a writing style which seems to suggest the actual historical presence of influences: "Puig's novels, and the filmed version of Kiss of the Spider Woman may have been a direct influence upon Wong Kar-wai" (31). This is both an attempt at historical reasoning and the avoiding of responsibility for error. Clever!

The "analysis" itself is just gesturing constantly to better books and thinkers, without actually arguing about their relevance. In addition there's a lot of weird associations thrown at the reader - here's a demonstration of this nonsensical free assocaition:

At the end of Happy Together, Lai will journey to Hong Kong via Taipei, perhaps in order to catch up with Chang, but not actually to see him. This gives a sense of being held in a labyrinth — and the labyrinth, of course, has always been the way in which Latin American countries have been seen. The labyrinth is also a challenge to masculinity, which, as in the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, traps masculinity within it. (41)

What exactly has been shown because of this observation? A common trope is pointed to, a feature of the trope is asserted. Is this just a round-about way of saying Latin America is a cage for masculinity, or is it a claim about how the movie presents Latin AMerica, or is that claim about how others have seen Latin America, or is this drawing attention to an interesting but not particularly relevant comparison? By giving up all pretentions to clarity, a vague and undeserved sense of profundity is induced by the writing style.

Or consider:

The film next returns to the bar, now seen in colour, where Lai uses a bottle to attack the American who had attacked Ho — a moment of class and political ressentiment… (50-1)

This isn't even a clear case of resentment, let alone the more theoretically-laden Nietzschean ressentiment and yet its just asserted, because why not?

There are attempts at analysizing the public-private/political-sexual distinctions through connections and critique, but it mostly comes off like he's read an encyclopedia about some regional events and decided to try to write something up. Most of the book is about trying (and failing) to connect the movie to other movies and film in the region, as well as factoids macquerading as analysis - did you know Tango originally was a colonial-era dance of immigrant men, sometimes among themselves, while they wait at brothels? How this is relevant to the protagonists' Tango is entirely unclear, but we learn an interesting fact, I guess!

The actual textures of this incredible movie are buried under the sloppy and inane thoughts of this critic, clearly well-read in the Western canon, who takes this opportunity to continuously show us how well read he is (and perhaps unintentionally, showing that reading good things isn't enough to produce original good things). Meanwhile, Wong Kar-Wai's Happy Together still stands deserving far better.

[JJ Cardillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great, albeit somewhat inconsistent read, about a tremendous film. Tambling’s DEEP dive into Happy Together is a gem filled with rich historical insight and a great depth in unpacking the texture behind Wong Kar-Wai’s best film (imo). This book does struggle as a cohesive read. At times too wordy and perhaps even too detailed. I had to take a long break during my reading, read a whole other book, then returned to finish this. By no means is that to say that it is bad, it’s just a dense 103 pages. This book works great as reference material for understanding Happy Together, Kar-Wai’s career, and the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. While Tambling offers a reading of the film as allegory and works to drill down to a concrete meaning of the film - it’s important to remember this is simply Tambling’s reading of the film.

great read. very detailed. nice to have.

[Dan Humphrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the better film companion books out there.