Happy Together (1997 film)
1997 film by Wong Kar-wai
Happy Together (Chinese: 春光乍洩) is a 1997 Hong Kong romantic drama film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai and starring Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-wai as a turbulent gay couple. The English title is inspired by the Turtles' 1967 song, which is covered by Danny Chung on the soundtrack. The Chinese title (previously used for Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup) is an idiomatic expression suggesting "the exposure of something intimate".
A landmark of Hong Kong LGBT cinema, the film was regarded as one of the best LGBT films in the New Queer Cinema movement and received critical acclaim and screened at several film festivals such as the 1997 Toronto International Film Festival; it was nominated for the Palme d'Or and won Best Director at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.
In 2022, Happy Together was ranked the 225th greatest film of all time in the Sight & Sound critics' poll. In 2016, the film was ranked the 3rd greatest LGBT film of all time in the British Film Institute poll. In 2018, it was ranked the 71st greatest foreign-language film of all time in the BBC poll.
Plot
Ho Po-Wing and Lai Yiu-Fai are a gay couple from Hong Kong with a turbulent relationship marked by frequent separations and reconciliations. They visit Argentina together but break up after they become lost while traveling to visit the Iguazu Falls. Without the money to fly home, Fai begins to work as a doorman at a tango bar in Buenos Aires, while Po-Wing lives promiscuously, often seen by Fai with different men.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Happy Together (1997 film)” is 1997 film by Wong Kar-wai. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Happy, Together and film, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “1997 film by Wong Kar-wai” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1204213. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997, 1967, 2022 and 2016.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Happy Together (1997 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.