Happy Together: “messages sent to no one” The scene in which Chang takes Fai’s tape-­‐recorded sadness to the “end of the world” represents a different kind of feeling compared to the theme of the rest of the movie. The “end of the world” is the only one scene which is characterized by magnificence, brightness, and the revealing of happiness upon the release of sadness. In the film, sadness is materialized as the tape recording of one person’s past thoughts, language and emotions. This concept represents a special relationship between time and memory: recording is a method of missing, and the action of leaving tape in the end of the world is to forget completely. In this film, Fai misses his controversial life with Bo-­‐wing that is full of love and sadness. So, Fai wants to forget the whole past life, since the deeper he loves Bo-­‐wing, the more sadness he will suffer. Standing in another perspective, Chang feels like going home when arriving at the end of the world, and the repeated sentence “let’s start over again,” which denotes the act of starting from the beginning, also expresses nostalgia. “Starting from beginning” can be understood as going back to the starting point-­‐-­‐home. The end of the world is the end of travel and vagrancy (and the start of a new life), but the end of the world in Fai’s eyes is not the southernmost tip of Argentina, but the Iguazu Falls, so Fai goes to the Falls and then goes back to Hongkong to start his new life. In addition, the film is made in 1997, the time when Hongkong returned to Mainland China. This return can be understood as a different type of nostalgia—one that functions on a social, rather than individual, level.

In the film “In the Mood for Love”, the protagonist Chow’s act of telling a secret to a hole in a tree functions as another way of forgetting. Chow wants no one to know his secret and wants to forget it as well. In both films, Fai and Chow have the same feeling; they want to bury their sadness and past lives forever: Fai’s cry conceals his story but releases his pain, and, in the same way, Chow permanently fills the hole with his secret. On the other hand, we find the social background in the last part of “In the Mood for Love” is that of French General Gaulle’s visit to Cambodia. When everyone is celebrating the arrival of the great man, Chow’s existence looks small in comparison to the entire political situation. Wong Kar-­‐Wai uses the same cinematic device in “Happy Together”, when he depicts the smallness of one vagrant’s inward world as a reflection on social sentiment at the time.

Wong Kar-­‐Wai’s two films depict two failed relationships in which the protagonists experience sadness and happiness, and ultimately, the two couples cannot have happy endings. As a result of their torturous relationships, the protagonists cannot be fully accepted by the outside world. Fai and Chow hope to rid themselves of the enormous social pressure placed on them; the messages sent to no one are seemingly the only way to release sadness. Wong Kar-­‐Wai’s films deal with vagrancy; the spectator can feel the protagonists’ homesickness in both films, and sending a message to no one reveals this weakness. The hidden nostalgia in the films is expressed when the protagonists are helpless and need to vent their sadness. The quotation “Let’s start over again” reveals the underlying theme of “Happy Together:” giving up or starting from the beginning. Fai gave up his relationship with Bo-­‐wing and started a new life backing home. In the same way,

Chow in “In the Mood for Love” gave up his fleeting relationship with So, and started a new life in the end of the film. The process from giving up to starting over is the gesture of releasing sadness.