Happy Together Review (page 4)

However, this is enough to set Tony on his long-awaited journey ‘home’. The contrast couldn’t be greater compared to anonymous sex and loneliness, and so some critics came to the conclusion that WKW saw homosexuality as ‘wayward’ or ‘foreign’ - a dubiously simplistic critical analysis. More interestingly, WKW has poked at the real issue of just how homosexuality is perceived in society. There are no rose-tinted glasses. When Tony’s voiceover informs us of how there is a rift between him and his father - he allegedly stole money from work and did a runner - somehow we are not entirely convinced. We are inclined to fill the narrative here with an idea, cliched yet realistic, of just how a ‘straight’ family (from a ‘straight’-surfaced culture) simply cannot understand ‘foreign’ queerness. The struggle between generations, ideals, cultures, all contained in the hint that WKW supplies - by the very conspicuous act of omitting direct reference.

In fact, the manner of inference by omission, and then inviting audience input to colour understanding is a technique referred to and refined by WKW in his next film, ITMFL. And the latter half of Happy Together also resembles elements of previous film Fallen Angels in its mood swings, and its emotional dislocation from plot. For, at a point in the narrative when we feel Tony is finally in motion, what are really moving are thoughts. There is a (day)dream of home, somehow as fetishistic as seeing a waterfall as a locus for a relationship, yet we are not jaded by this. This one scene of Hong Kong in the movie consists of upside-down shots from a moving vehicle. Yet it seems so poignant at that point in the film - part alien (how long have we been in Argentina?), but augmented by the soundtrack of utterly everyday Cantonese radio talk - this feels undeniably like home, but literally as we’ve never seen it before (trust me, the scene doesn’t quite play the same the ‘right’ way up).

And the characteristic strength of WKW shines through once more, in that he brings a feeling to the audience by allowing us to share a character’s consciousness - without the need for self-substitution into the fabric of the narrative. We see Tony’s dream/fetish, and we feel his homesickness - and we understand this even though we might not possess the Hong Kong identity (the elusive concept probed at the very beginning of the movie) which one might imagine was necessary to understand such a feeling.

Tony takes up work in an abattoir, again with reference to his impending trip home - the hours put him on Hong Kong time - and the work has a simple mechanical, indeed, brutal quality which no longer asks him to interface (unlike his forced platitudes when greeting tourists earlier on). Pain still afflicts him as he realises he is closer to the point of final departure, yet there is also hope for the direction that he has taken. Eventually, he makes the ritualistic journey to the Falls on his own. Though he professes guilt for not having Leslie by his side at that point, it is also a watershed (no pun intended) in that he has reached the idealised locus of his relationship with Leslie, but to see it in reality, and in doing so to end the fantasy of the fetish.

In contrast, Leslie takes up residence in Tony’s old flat in Buenos Aires, and in cargo cult fashion he plays out the actions of the one he is now missing - cleaning the apartment, buying a stack of cigarettes. As a polar opposite to the hope we feel with Tony, there is a tired weariness to Leslie’s actions. He still clings on to the representation of the Falls in the souvenir lamp, and there is a tragic irony when we see in a close-up of the lamp two tiny and barely visible figures at the edge of the Falls, just as Tony arrives at the real thing to ruminate on leaving Leslie (...hinting that Leslie’s magnified pain - in the only extended sequence to feature him alone - may actually be a projection of Tony’s mindscreen of guilt).

It is then epilogue territory as we find Chang at the lighthouse at ‘the end of the world’. The camera is just like the lighthouse’s beam, ceaselessly circling - this is one place where we will not stay long, we will not be entrenched. Chang, too, feels loneliness, the distance of geography making him reach out in his feelings to those he has left behind at home. Comically, Tony’s tape recording is given delayed release - (just about) communicating emotion via a dilated separation of space and time. A point is then made of showing Chang returning to Buenos Aires on his way home, but WKW is in classic disjunctive mode - Tony is gone and, though they may be in the same city, Chang and Leslie never do cross their narratives.

With the following insertion of news footage reporting the death of Deng Xiaoping, we feel an undeniable desire to try to correlate the narrative with a ‘wider’ political backdrop. Many readings are possible, and WKW plays with this idea by using an identical device in ITMFL, with the insertion of de Gaulle’s visit to Cambodia. Part self-reflexive, part historical, these references (in recent WKW films) show a desire to contrast a character’s insular consciousness with wider social repercussions of change. But WKW doesn’t force this into the forefront of his characters’ lives: in both films Tony doesn’t show any sign of thought on the issues of politics and history. Such a digression gives a textural contrast and the opportunity for an audience to gauge just how such issues might or might not (or should or should not) interface with the story.

Pointedly, Tony ends in Taipei - the ‘other’ China - and WKW contrasts the news footage with the bustle of the night market where the news seems forgotten, irrelevant. Times are a-changing and Tony is on a new journey, possibly to ‘home’. Taipei is another waystation, and Chris Doyle’s photography epitomises the movement of this metropolis. Visiting Chang’s family food stall, there is a documentary-like slice of the everyday as Tony identifies home as something which allows Chang to be carefree. This analysis highlights just how previous WKW protagonists - often orphans of fate - have become so insecure and insular, how their fear of rejection gives them a steely exterior which rejects possibilities in favour of stasis. But on the other hand, such insecure characters are the source of the drama in WKW’s films: their existential dilemmas and epiphanies are all the more profound and moving as they illustrate the complexity of the ‘human condition’.

Indeed, the point-blank reference to home and family seems like another idealisation of Tony’s. What more could convince him that Leslie’s way is ‘wrong’, and that his path to uncertain reunion (or what could turn out to be final rejection, a la Days) with his father is ‘right’? Whilst there is a heartfelt earnestness and a sense of uplift as Tony moves towards home, there is also the feel that the ending - as uncertain and open-ended as anything WKW has constructed (complete with ambiguous Tony smile - he’s really the master of those) - consists of a mood which has the very effect of making us question its validity (a possibility lost on those critics who read Tony’s outlook as a pure projection of the director). Or, in other words, does the mood have to match a sense of whether Tony’s future is ‘good’ or ‘bad’? Or do we take moods as they come - impermanent wisps of emotion which are not necessarily correlative with judgement values?