Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together

Wong Kar-wai's controversial film, Happy Together, was released in Hong Kong just before the handover of power in 1997. The film 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. Examining one single, memorable, and beautiful film, but placing it in the context of other films by Wong Kar-wai and other Hong Kong directors, this book illustrates the depth, as well as the spectacle and action, that characterizes Hong Kong cinema.

Jeremy Tambling is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong. He has written widely on European and American literature, and on opera on film. His latest book is Becoming Posthumous: Life and Death in Literary and Cultural Studies (Edinburgh University Press, 2002).