One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw portrait of a relationship in freefall casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung as a couple traveling through Argentina and locked in a cycle of infatuation and destructive jealousy as they break up, make up, and fall apart again. Setting out to depict the dynamics of a queer relationship with empathy and complexity on the cusp of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong, Wong crafts a feverish look at the life cycle of a love affair that is by turns devastating and deliriously romantic. Shot by Christopher Doyle in both luminous monochrome and saturated colour, Happy Together is an intoxicating exploration of displacement and desire.

Notes by David O’Mahony 

Screening as part of The World of Wong Kar Wai season.