Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
We move over to Argentina in this 1997 effort, as Leslie Cheung’s Ho Po-wing and Tony Leung’s Lai Yiu-fai are introduced to us on an ill fated road trip to a scenic waterfall, aborted when an argument sees Po-wing storm off and initiate the latest in what’s clearly a series of breakups between the two.
Later we rejoin Fai, working as a promoter cum bouncer at a Buenos Aires nightclub, with him taking up the by now familiar voice over duties of narrating his life, trying to save up money to return to a Hong Kong that he misses, when life throws a spanner in the works when Po-wing shows up with a new bloke, although it seems that he’s a paying client.
A blow by blow recap of the twists and turns of their relationship as they are again drawn to each other, through some desperate events, probably won’t do a great deal of justice to them, but it must be said that after the last episodes’ surfeit of relationships that stretched credulity, we finally have one here that I can finally believe in and invest some emotion in. Not a healthy relationship, obviously, on either party’s end, but one that feels altogether human as these two come together again, and, inevitably, it seems, apart again.
The other strand woven in to this comes from a work colleague of Fai’s, Chang Chen’s Chang, another Taiwanese youngster touring about, stopping off to make some money before travelling to the ends of the Earth, or at least the lighthouse at the end of the world. He and Fai become friends – Chang’s only friend in Argentina, he says, and it seems like there may be more than just friendship on the cards. However, it’s not the case, Chang remaining a solitary figure on the rest of his travels, leaving us wondering if, perhaps, the title of this film is purely ironic.
If you didn’t catch our last podcast, the general consensus would be that Wai has style to spare in his films, although plot and character were, in fact, spared almost entirely. As a relationship study I suppose you could argue that this still isn’t going in hard on the plot elements, but as mentioned earlier it’s finally delivered a bunch of characters that I’m invested in, a final component for proper enjoyment of his films when coupled with the now-expected fine performances from Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung.
Thankfully, the style remains too, with another well shot film that contrasts the city’s charms alongside the character’s less glamorous lodgings, and later, workplaces. Finally it’s all come together to produce something I can recommend without having to put any caveats in.
As for wider meaning, I’ve heard arguments on both sides as to this presentation of the gay relationship, drawing as it does little to no attention to the leads actually being gay. Is this entirely normalising the relationship in society, as it ideally should, or minimising the lived experiences of the gay community for whom such normalisation is far from guaranteed, both, sadly, now and at the time of release? I’m not best placed to judge, but I’d recommend y’all watch it and make your own mind up.