Happy Together 15

One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar-Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Leslie Cheung as a couple traveling through Argentina and locked in a turbulent cycle of infatuation and destructive jealousy as they break up, make up, and fall apart again and again.

Setting out to depict the dynamics of a gay relationship with empathy and complexity on the cusp of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong—when the country’s LGBT+ community suddenly faced an uncertain future—Wong Kar-Wai 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 luscious saturated colour, Happy Together is an intoxicating exploration of displacement and desire that swoons with the ache and exhilaration of love at its heart-tearing extremes.