Happy Together

What do you know about Hong Kong?

Themes

• Migrant experience - travelling
• Sexuality and homosexuality
• Exploration of time & space - moving on, 'starting over', loss and love
• Dreams & nostalgia, the meaning of happiness
• A meta-lingual film about film
• Existential crisis

‘It is several things: a Hong Kong film, but one set in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a closing sequence in Taiwan; a version of a North American ‘road movie’; a film about homosexuals and homosexuality made by – for what the statement is worth, and not wishing to be essentialist about categories – a heterosexual director; a film about Hong Kong on the eve of the transfer of power, complete with a televised sequence recording the death of Deng Xiao-ping; a film about exile, or nostalgia, or displacement; and, finally, a film about Hong Kong, or, possibly, about Argentina.’
Jeremy Tambling

Define: Migrant

Migrant (noun): a person who moves from one place to another in order to find work or better living conditions.

"I went to Argentina to get as far away as possible from Hong Kong in the run up to the territories reversion to Chinese sovereignty."
- Wong Kar-Wai

Once there, Wong Kar-Wai found himself making a film about identity - the issue most on the minds of people from Hong Kong at the time.

A Tale of Two Cities

The transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China, referred to as "the Handover" took place on 1 July 1997.

It is often regarded as marking the end of the British Empire.

"For the past two years everybody has been asking me about the fate of Hong Kong and if my next film would be about 1997. I didn't have an answer so I thought we should just walk away and try something else."
- Wong Kar-Wai

The fact that Hong Kong does not appear in Happy Together does not mean the film is not concerned with Hong Kong and its people.

The characters modes of eating and their playing of Mahjong is a reminder of the power of cultural identity.

Why Buenos Aires?

Buenos Aires is directly on the opposite side of the world to Hong Kong

"I wonder how Hong Kong looks upside down."

‘Hong Kong is the opposite of Argentina, at 398 square miles (just over half London’s size) with very little land dedicated for agriculture. Buenos Aires’s population is double that of Hong Kong. The two places are there for comparing and contrasting’

Jeremy Tambling

Buenos Aires is part of an ex-colony. Colonised by Spain until 1852. It became an immigrant society where 3 million people arrived between 1869 - 1914.

Argentina's biggest export is beef and lamb. The beef carcasses and slaughterhouse scenes in the film recall the cities importance in this field.

It's like the film wanted to capture Buenos Aires through the eyes of somebody completely disconnected from Argentine society.

Untitled Slide

The Iguazu Falls

'The river, as it flows down, makes a border between Brazil and Paraguay and Paraguay and Argentina as it flows into the estuary formed by La Plata river, on the west bank of which is Buenos Aires'
Jeremy Tambling

Migration & the 'road movie' in Happy Together

Jeremy Tambling - HT & the road movie

• The road movie - ‘marginal, rejecting the politics of home and going outside the boundaries of heterosexual society’
• ‘It is the fantasy of escape […] of freedom from constraints, which is narcissistic, and of getting to the ‘other side of the mountain’

What are the common features of the American road movie?

"our cars and our roads are one of the few arenas where it is acceptable to act out aggression"

The characters have no home.
Hong Kong is not the same.
Argentina is so culturally different to their country of birth.

Lai and Ho ultimately need stability, yet they feel that constant movement is the only way to solve their problems.

Group Research Topics

• The representation of Buenes Aires
• Hong Kong's presence in the film
• How far is Happy Together a road movie?
• Lai and Ho as migrants

Exam Question

• How far is Happy Together a film about the migrant experience?

How are Lai and Ho integrated into Argentine society? How do they cling onto their HK identities?

How does Buenos Aires come across in the film? What is it like to live there as a migrant?