Leslie Cheung makes difficult people attractive enough that we understand why others stay. We value the emotional precision of his acting, especially in Happy Together, where affection survives plenty of reasons to leave.
Fi1m perspective
In Happy Together (1997), Leslie Cheung makes Ho Po-wing appealing even when his behaviour is wearing. Tony Leung Chiu-wai gives Lai a weariness we can understand, yet Cheung keeps us interested in the man causing so much of it. We are never required to decide that Ho deserves our approval before the relationship can matter. This is Cheung at his most persuasive: allowing affection to remain credible when patience is running short.
His film career gathered pace with John Woo's A Better Tomorrow (1986) and the fantasy A Chinese Ghost Story (1987). He worked with Wong Kar-wai on Days of Being Wild (1990), and Farewell My Concubine (1993) brought international recognition. Wong and Chen Kaige are recurring collaborators in work concerned with identity and relationships. His ease with gender ambiguity is part of that appeal, especially in Farewell My Concubine. But the small changes of expression that make intense feeling seem natural are as important to understanding his acting as the kinds of parts he took.
The advantage is clearest in the work Cheung shares with Leung. In Happy Together, Leung's unhappiness does not reduce Ho to the person preventing Lai from being happy; Cheung makes the attachment between them substantial enough to resist that easy reading. We were moved by the affection they sustain, because neither actor pretends it makes living together comfortable. Wong gets something valuable from the pairing: we can care about both men without being asked to excuse everything either of them does.
There is a limit to what those performances can repair. The fractured storytelling in Happy Together begins to repeat itself, and even these actors cannot prevent the familiar difficulties from becoming wearing. They do, however, keep the men interesting, which is why we recommend the film despite that repetition. Start here for Cheung, but save it for an evening when a painful romance is welcome.
Biography
Leslie Cheung was a Hong Kong singer and actor. Born Cheung Fat-chung on 12 September 1956 in Kowloon, he studied in England before returning to Hong Kong. He gained early attention through a 1977 singing contest and released his first album the following year.
Cheung appeared in 56 films over a 26-year career. He is known for roles including Sung Tse-kit in A Better Tomorrow (1986), Yuddy in Days of Being Wild (1990), Ling Choi-san in A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), Ouyang Feng in Ashes of Time (1994), Ho Po-wing in Happy Together (1997) and Cheng Dieyi in Farewell My Concubine (1993). He won Best Actor at the 1991 Hong Kong Film Awards for Days of Being Wild.
Cheung died by suicide on 1 April 2003 in Hong Kong, aged 46.
