Wong Kar Wai is up to his old tricks -- using various film stocks and camera speeds, using in-and-out-of-focus shots, mixing color and black-and-white -- only this time he's not enhancing the grittiness of his tale, he's hiding its defects. Happy Together is at first an interesting look at an extremely dysfunctional relationship between two Hong Kong men now living in Argentina (no idea what inspired that one...), but its histrionics eventually grow wearisome. The study of contrasting lives and lifestyles is hardly unique save for its inexplicably original setting. Terribly conceited and almost unbearably padded.

Aka Cheun gwong tsa sit.