When Wong Kar-wai’s gay film Happy Together won big at Cannes Film Festival
- The acclaimed filmmaker was awarded best director at the festival in 1997 – the year of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule
- He expressed the hope that he would be able to continue to make the kind of films he wanted
Under the headline “Wong and Cannes, happy together”, the South China Morning Post on May 20, 1997, reported: “In winning the Best Director prize on Sunday night […], Wong acknowledges that had his movie been released a year from now, he might not be nursing his golden statuette.”
“This award has special meaning to us in 1997; I hope we can work in the same way in the future and make the kind of films we want to make […] If you really believe in something and you want to do it, make the film – legally or illegally,” Wong, the confessed “boring guy”, said at the awards ceremony.
It was unclear then whether Wong would be able to continue making films in his typically unscripted way, with Beijing requiring movies to match scripts submitted in advance for checking. Meanwhile, posters for the film showing both men fully clothed but with their legs intertwined had just been banned from public places in Hong Kong and would be removed ahead of the film’s release, the movie’s distributor told the Post.
Leung flew to Cannes for the first time with a “megawatt toothy grin […] pasted permanently” on what the Post referred to as his usually “impassive” face, and was seen “practising the tango on the beachfront into the early hours”.
Leung’s performance in Happy Together won rave reviews, the Post reported, and the actor explained that he had been tricked into the role by Wong, telling the newspaper: “On the very first day we shot the sex scene, Kar-wai told me to take off my trousers when I got on the set.”
