Favorite Characters: Lai Yiu-fai (Happy Together)

A Little TLC(w) addition to my Happy Together review:  “Recommend?  In General – Yes.  It takes its time and it wanders a little, but I’d say it’s rewarding.  Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Yes again.  Lovely, subtle work here, and it’s probably one of the least – I don’t know, self-aware? – instances I’ve seen of a straight actor playing a gay character.  There’s never an air of ‘Tony Leung Chiu-wai Plays Gay!!’ about it.”  This was the latest of Leung’s many collaborations with Wong Kar-wai that I rewatched, and it’s still just as beautiful as the first time (a few spoilers.)

Leung has played a lot of messed-up people for Wong, mainly guys who’ve been kicked around by love in one way or another, but I think Fai might be the most messed-up of all.  He can be aching to watch, because you can see that he’s a decent, basically-normal guy who’s had his head done in by his relationship with Ho Po-wing.  It’s especially sad because even he knows that Po-wing is no good for him, but every time his ex-boyfriend asks to “start over,” Fai is a goner.  In the period of their relationship the story centers on, Fai tries to actively resist falling for Po-wing again – he’s almost physically brittle when Po-wing tries to be affectionate with him, and he throws up walls at every turn.  But even then, despite what have to be Fai’s best efforts, Po-wing slips back into Fai’s life and starts working his way back into Fai’s heart.

And it is not a healthy relationship to be in – for either of them, really.  Fai gets spun around by Po-wing’s manipulation and sucked into the upheaval of his life, but it’s not just Fai getting dumped on by the lover he can’t quit.  Fai’s own feelings for Po-wing mess him up but good, and he does some objectively-crappy stuff for fear of losing him.  In a way, Fai is two different people with and without Po-wing, because when Fai is with him, he only becomes what they do to each other when they’re together.  When they’re apart, even with Po-wing’s shadow still haunting the apartment, we see a different Fai.

I don’t think there are many actors who can quietly break my heart as well as Tony Leung Chiu-wai can, as he’s demonstrated to me numerous times, and this film is a prime example.  Nearly everything about Fai is tragic to me.  Being stuck in Argentina, his “holiday” long over but unable to afford his way home.  Trying to resist Po-wing, falling for him anyway, and hating himself for it.  Feeling his affections getting toxic and doing bad things to try and keep his lover (tragic but not perfect – I like that Fai has some sizable flaws.  His culpability in his situation and his own sketchy decisions don’t make what he’s going through any less sad.)  Growing close to Chang but still keeping himself just as arm’s length.

Here, the crowning heartbreak moment is the “tape recorder” scene.  It just about knocked me off my feet the first time I saw it.  Such rawness and vulnerability, so much letting go for a character who’s often all about burying his feelings, but it’s still such a gentle scene.  In this moment, without words and only seeing about half of his face, we see a man break wide open.  This time around, an A.E. Housman poem came to mind:  “He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? / He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. / I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder, / And went with half my life about my ways.”  What goes on between Fai and Chang is very quiet and understated, and it’s hard to say exactly what Fai feels for Chang, but whether his affection is love or friendship, the emotion of it, what we see in the scene, is what I think we find in the poem.  Just stunning work.

Relationship Spotlight: Lai Yiu-fai & Ho Po-wing (Happy Together)

Rather like Adam and Nina from Bright Young Things, Fai and Po-wing are most interesting in how they don’t work as a couple.  The effect here, however, is quite different.  While Nina and Adam’s big problem is that they’re too immature to commit in the way that they need to, these two are perhaps too committed, too invested in a relationship they’d be better off without.  (Some spoilers.)

I don’t want to say that things are a constant struggle whenever Po-wing and Fai are on-again.  It’s not.  They have quiet, genuine “happy together” moments – dancing, sex, nodding off in the back of a taxi.  Little glimpses of perfection that help maintain the pull that keeps bringing them back towards each other.  It’s harder to tell with Po-wing, since a) he’s really not a focal-point character, and b) he seems to vibe on tumult, but in these rare, contented scenes, I’d say Fai wonders why they can’t be like this all the time.

But these glimpse are just that – glimpses.  The vast majority of the time, it’s fighting (verbal/physical) and mistrust and broken promises and tantrums and passive-aggressive power plays.  Po-wing walks all over Fai, knowing that, no matter how vehemently Fai breaks ties with him, they’ll fall right back into their old routines if Po-wing can hook Fai again.  And hook him he does.  Po-wing turns on the charm, he showers Fai with presents, and he insists on intimacy.  He uses his turbulent living to his advantage, counting on Fai’s sympathy, care, and resources whenever his (Po-wing’s) reckless ways get him hurt or in trouble.

And so Fai takes him back.  And so they restart the cycle.  Po-wing’s sweet talk, affection, and helplessness never last for long.  It’s just a matter of time before he grows restless and his eye starts wandering.  He’s soon back to taking Fai for granted, criticizing him and bringing chaos to both their lives.  As for Fai, he’s quickly up to his old ways of jealousy and suspicion, calling Po-wing out for inconsideration but generally rolling over in the end.  I know it makes Fai feel pretty miserable – he’s resentful of how Po-wing treats him, and he’s disappointed in himself for taking it.  Again, I’m less sure of Po-wing’s reaction to it, but I can’t imagine it’s all that good for him, either.  I think Fai can make him feel penned in – I could see Po-wing being annoyed that the term “old ball and chain” was already coined in reference to one’s partner, because he probably thinks he should’ve come up with it as a description of Fai.

Despite the sniping, animosity, and overall distress, though, there’s such a tug between them, an unwillingness to fully go their separate ways.  Po-wing has a frequent too-cool vibe, insinuating that Fai is totally beneath him and he could do so much better.  And yet, when he’s in trouble, it’s Fai that he goes to, Fai that he clings to.  And while, in the main thread of their story that we see, Fai starts out very resistant to letting Po-wing back in, he quickly loses all sense of proportion despite himself.  Even as he sets up rules to keep Po-wing at arms’ length (ie, not sleeping in the same bed,) he takes and hides Po-wing’s passport because he’s afraid Po-wing will leave Argentina and, by extension, Fai.  Po-wing is frequently awful to Fai, but that’s horrible, too.  Even before you factor in all the dysfunction and insecurity that must permeate their relationship for Fai to do something like that, there’s still the basic fact that Po-wing is an adult who can leave if he wants to.  It’s like they’re each other’s drug.  Openly acknowledged or not, they both know the relationship is bad for them, but they just can’t let go.