Blogical Conclusion

CAN’T LIVE WITH HIM, CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT HIM

MAY 17, 2008 - ART-FILM DIRECTORS ARE NOTORIOUS FOR holding their cards close to the chest, for saying a lot about their films (in order to promote them) and yet not really saying anything of value (in order to promote the mystery around them) – so imagine my surprise and delight when, while snooping around for information about the genesis of Happy Together, I stumbled onto this nugget from director Wong Kar-Wai himself. Interviewed about this Chinese film for the radio station WBAI 99.5 FM, New York, this is what he had to say about on-again, off-again lovers Lai Yui-Fai (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) and Ho Po-Wing (Leslie Cheung Kwok-Wing). “Well, to me, [their] relationship seems like [that between] a plane and an airport. The character Leslie Cheung is to me like a plane. His nature is going to land sometimes and going to take off sometimes.”

“And the character of Tony Leung seems to me just like an airport. But sometimes, when this airport refuses to be an airport anymore and the plane has no place to land, this is the end of the relationship.” This metaphor about aircraft and airports and takeoffs and landings fits snugly into Happy Together, which touches on flight and travel and distance and the yearning for home, all within the context of relationships. As the film begins, Lai and Ho are in Buenos Aires, trying to get to Iguazu Falls – and along the way, having lost their way, their on-again relationship becomes off again. “I never did find out where we were that day,” Lai tells us. “He said it’s boring to be with me, that we should take a break, and perhaps start over again some day.”

Lai returns to Buenos Aires, and begins to work as the doorman in a tango bar, distributing flyers to tourists who couldn’t care less. One evening, Ho – now a prostitute – visits the bar with a few of his “white trash” clients. Lai is stunned, seeing his ex-boyfriend again, seeing him with all these other men – but Ho doesn’t seem to notice. He’s too busy living it up, too busy being a patron to look at the hired help. But when Ho leaves, when he lights a cigarette sitting in the backseat of the car, he glances back at Lai’s receding image. He knows.

He knows that Lai was looking at him driving away. He knows there’s still something left, a barely-glowing ember at a corner of a dead fire. That’s why he calls Lai to his hotel room, because “I just want to be with you. I really do.” But Lai’s had enough of dealing with Ho’s wild extremes of emotional neediness – now hot, now cold – so he utters an expletive and storms off. But when Ho shows up at his house, with blood streaking down the face and with bloodied palms, Lai knows that – whether he wants to or not – he’s going to have to take care of his ex, who has no one else. And so begins a gradual warming of a relationship that had gone stone cold.

Lai is cautious at first – for his protection, more than anything else, having been burnt once – but it’s perhaps the constant presence in his life of a familiar face in an unfamiliar city, or perhaps the fact that he has no one else either, and the boundaries between them begin to blur. Ho cannot take showers, so Lai scrubs him down every day. Ho’s hands are in bandages, so Lai cooks for him and spoon-feeds him broth and pieces of chicken. Ho complains that the bed has fleas, so Lai removes the bedding and disinfects the area and restores the bedding. Ho runs out of cigarettes, so Lai, in the middle of the night, treks it to the store and returns with a pack. They go to the races, they try to tango together – and somewhere down the line, they begin to grow closer. And as their history suggests, they simultaneously begin to drift apart.

When Ho returns after a late night, Lai is suspicious. He doesn’t quite believe it when Ho says he was just out to get cigarettes. Lai buys cartons of cigarettes and stacks them around his one-room apartment, pack after pack after pack reminding Ho of the relationship prison he’s come back to. His free spirit can’t take it any more. He leaves. Then, much, much later, when Lai gives up this apartment and sets off for a destination unknown to Ho, when Ho needs Lai again, he returns to Lai’s empty one-room and decorates it with pack after pack after pack of cigarettes. Maybe he’s grown up now. Maybe he realises that relationship prisons are preferable to loneliness. Maybe he realises that, problems and all, he and Lai could have been, well, happy together. And maybe Lai feels the same way. Having finally made it to Iguazu Falls, he muses, “I felt very sad. I felt like there should be two of us standing here.”

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