Unbelonging in Wong Kar-Wai’s ‘Happy Together’
Part of our But Where Are You Really From? season.
"Ho Po-Wing always says, "Let's start over," and it gets to me every time. We've been together for a while and break up often, but whenever he says, "Let's start over," I find myself back with him. So we left Hong Kong to start over," are the opening lines of Happy Together, a celebrated Wong Kar-Wai film from 1997. Lai Yiu-Fai, played by Tony Leung, narrates these lines as he introduces us to his tumultuous relationship with Ho Po-Wing, played by Leslie Cheung. The couple travels to Argentina in a bid to escape and find themselves again, chasing the Iguazu Falls at the Argentine border, which become a central metaphor for the two as they repeatedly fail to reach their destination and, in the process, lose themselves in Buenos Aires, along with their money to get back home.
Happy Together opens with a love scene between the two protagonists. Only a year before the film's release, hundreds of Chinese tonghzi gathered in Hong Kong to abandon the Western LBT movement, asserting, instead, Chinese indigenous queer identities that had supposedly existed long before British colonialism. The word tonghzi - meaning common will - originated in the 1890s during political speeches and was reclaimed to synonymise Chinese queer identities in Hong Kong. For Kar-Wai, then, to visualise raw intimacy between two men, on-screen, with political tensions so severe, was a vision the director is celebrated for. For almost two minutes, the protagonists share the joy and pain of intimacy and queerness. In one interview, Kar-Wai claims that he didn't intend this to be a 'gay film', but it became pivotal to the larger tonghzi movement in Hong Kong.
Identity politics in Hong Kong
Before the decriminalisation of male homosexuality in 1991, gay men shared intimacies in private. The colonial government in 1842 criminalised anal intercourse and made into law the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 that dealt with 'gross indecency' between men, in 1901. Before the 1980s, homosexuality wasn't a 'social problem.' It was colonialism that enforced heterosexuality in Chinese society.
The power of heteronormativity was such that it established control over both public and private spaces, but it was especially the control over the 'private' that pushed the tonghzi population to access public spaces like toilets, bars, railway stations, and streets. The institutionalisation of the family as heterosexual and reproductive left an impact on first-generation tonghzi who, for a long time, worked within these structures and remained largely invisible. Kar-Wai in Happy Together, consciously or not, wove the identity politics of Hong Kong into the individual journeys of Lai Yiu-Fai and Ho Po-Wing. The shift in the culture and politics of Hong Kong contextualised the characters' conflicts, both internal and external.
When stranded in Argentina and broken up for the time, both strive to make a living. Lai Yiu-Fai works as a security guard at a Tango club, where he finds Ho Po-Wing one night and learns that he's a sex worker. It is at this juncture in their relationship that the film moves into a commentary on queer Asian diaspora and how they build their lives away from their home countries. Lai Yiu-Fai in one scene narrates, "It's hard for Chinese people to find work in Argentina," on the night he first encounters Ho Po-Wing since their separation. World over, in white, heteropatriarchal societies, the Asian diaspora is tethered to race and its influence(s) on gender. For them, tensions with belonging are defined by a push to 'unlearn' one's home and treat it as regressive since the West systemically sought to impose an abandonment of indigenous Asian culture. But, throughout the film, both are trying to return to a home, and whether that is Hong Kong or their self, remains unclear till the end.
The burden of the past
The handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997 didn't immediately alter the course for queer partnerships. While some ordinances protected the privacy of queer folk, the Equal Opportunity Ordinances did not allow their legal marriages or protect individuals based on their sexual orientation. At the backdrop of this, Happy Together was borne from a need to 'escape', which was descriptive of the anxieties surrounding the Handover. The abusive nature of the relationship between the protagonists had more to do with tensions around belonging than the nature of their partnership.
The film does not give a backstory to either of the men; we do not know their families or their pasts, but we know that both are burdened by the latter. We only know that Lai Yiu-Fai once stole from his father, thus straining their relationship. The shame of which he seems to carry with him throughout.
The dynamic between Lai Yiu-Fai and Ho Po-Wing is a window into understanding the impact of Hong Kong's identity politics on queer lives. Yiu-Fai is a reserved caretaker and provider, who holds onto the relationship a little more in the beginning. Po-Wing, in contrast, spends his nights with other men during the time of their separation and never seems to be quite settled. Kar-Wai describes the duo as an "airport and a plane," where Yiu-Fai is the airport, and Po-Wing the plane. It is a wonder if both characters were influenced by the actors’ real lives since Tony Leung was not prepared to play a gay man on day one of shooting, and Leslie Cheung was a queer icon in Hong Kong, known for keeping away from tonghzi identity, instead constructing his own narrative.
For most of the time that the two are settling in Buenos Aires, Yiu-Fai is working as a doorman in a Tango bar that is frequented by Chinese immigrants and queer folk. The job itself, however, is unrewarding and lonely. He's negotiating isolation with no community at his support. Ho Po-Wing returns to him when the conditions of his work leave him injured, and soon after, Yiu-Fai takes him in to nurse him back to health. Whether separated or together, both have only each other in a foreign country that is unwelcoming to them. Until Po-Wing's injury, Yiu-Fai didn't even consider friendships outside of this relationship, but soon after Po-Wing's nights are altered to the bed, Yiu-Fai finds it in him to quit his job and become a cook at a Chinese restaurant. It is there that he meets Hsiao Chang, another Chinese immigrant, and a potential friend.
This development in Yiu-Fai's life allows him to imagine more for himself, to reach into the world and find excess in his life and his queerness. When Chang shares that he has saved enough money to travel, and leaves, Yiu-Fai turns his heartbreak into an opportunity to find himself again and sets out onto the streets of a democratised Buenos Aires.
The tango scene
The film's cinematographic masterpiece lies in its tango scene. As Yiu-Fai and Po-Wing slowly find their paths joined again, Yiu-Fai becomes more comfortable with caring for Po-Wing. "One thing I never told Ho Po-Wing was that I didn't want him to recover too quickly. Those were our happiest days." Care work, although difficult, allowed Yiu-Fai access to Po-Wing that he didn't have before. It was like coming home.
A montage of the two living together - Po-Wing healing and Yiu-Fai caring for him - cuts to a one-minute tango scene between the two in the shared kitchen space of their community living building. The immediate inference from this is that the dance symbolises where the two reunited after their separation, the tango club where Yiu-Fai worked, but this choice serves a larger purpose.
The Argentine tango was born on the streets of Buenos Aires in the late 1800s, amid a severe economic crisis in the country. It was danced by the urban poor and became a space of subaltern expression, reflection, and healing. It was also, originally, a heterosexual dance, meant between a man and a woman, where the man would lead and the woman would follow. But, if removed from this archetype, it is ultimately a space of desire and longing between two bodies. By visualising two men dancing the traditional tango, Kar-Wai transgressed boundaries of nations, gender, and time.
At the time Buenos Aires was making small strides in queer acceptance. In 1997, the Argentine government recognised the partnership of a gay couple. They attributed this to democracy and the opportunities it gave queer folk. Additionally, the government had given spousal retirement benefits to queer couples who had lived together for at least five years. Sexual freedom was undergoing a dramatic shift in the country.
In the years following Happy Together, queer tango slowly picked up. In Germany, a queer tango festival was organised in 2001, and by 2005, Argentina witnessed its first queer tango festival.
Trying to belong, trying to unbelong
By the end of Happy Together, one understands the title is ironic. Kar-Wai took two lovers, any lovers, to tell a story about how our pasts burden us. By denying them, we deny parts of ourselves.
In the end, Yiu-Fai returns to Hong Kong, leaving Po-Wing behind, along with the heartbreak from the relationship. Yiu-Fai's friendship with Chang introduces him to a world beyond Po-Wing, and he is finally able to walk the streets of Argentina where, for the first time, queer men are visible. Perhaps it is here that he comes home?
We never really know what happens to him and his father, or where Po-Wing eventually settles, the latter is a missing narrative from the film. But on his return to Hong Kong, Yiu-Fai stops in Taipei and visits Chang's family's restaurant at the Liao Ning night market. Witnessing this community, he narrated, "I didn't see Chang, but I saw his family. I finally understood how he could be happy running around so free. It's because he has a place he can always return to."
Mobility is greatly defined by the home, the family, the community. How do you leave your home, and hold onto it at the same time? How do you return?
Sources:
1. Tongzhi: “Queer” Identity Politics in Hong Kong Before and After the Handover
2. A fading Tongzhi heterotopia: Hong Kong older gay men’s use of spaces
3. The fourth wave? A critical reflection on the tonghzi movement in Hong Kong
4. A fading Tongzhi heterotopia: Hong Kong older gay men’s use of spaces
5. IN DRAMATIC CHANGE, GAYS ARE WINNING ACCEPTANCE IN ARGENTINA
6. The Politics of Tango
Saachi D’Souza
Instagram: @saachdsouza
Twitter: @saachidsouza
This piece is a part of our But Where Are You Really From? season, made possible thanks to the BFI Audience Fund awarding funding from the National Lottery.
