I hear the rush of the waterfall before I see it, nestled downstream from a small creek in Southern France. Metallic water flows along its shallows like static, only noticeably audible once your attention is drawn to its source. “Waterfall” might be a stretch; it’s more of a slight downward incline that water pours over with surprising power, coursing inconspicuously through the trees.
Nothing about a waterfall is stagnant; not the river that brings you there, nor the swirling pool that cushions its blows. Waterfalls are over-the-top displays of nature’s brute force, their mist deceptively settling over onlookers with the gentleness of a first snow. Wong Kar-wai captures this flowing juxtaposition beautifully in his 1997 film Happy Together, a romance about a Hong Kong couple whose relationship chaotically unravels during a trip to Argentina, where they become stranded with no money to return home. South America’s legendary Iguazu Falls bookends the movie, serving as a symbol for Wong to explore the idea of exile, both from homeland and lover, questioning whether loneliness is best soothed alone or with someone else.
The film opens with aerial shots over Iguazu, a close-up where millions of litres of murky water pour over the cliff, shooting up mystical clouds of blueish mist that billow nearly as high as the cascade itself. The camera slowly curves around the open mouth of the waterfall with a handheld rhythm, leaving the audience in awe at its vastness. Despite its movement, the shot feels oddly still. The mist is only an illusion—a testament to the waterfall’s mythic proportions whose lack of physical grounding would let your body nosedive into the rapids below.
Whether on screen or in nature, the sight and sound of pounding water is an unexpected reminder of home, where I grew up on the banks of the Niagara River. The region’s three chutes don’t have the same untamed power nor height as Iguazu, yet they still enjoy a reputation as one of the wonders of the world. Although I haven’t lived there since I was 18, I still consider Niagara to be home, spending a week or two per year lounging around its shores.
For the past few years, I was floating around France between work, accommodation exchanges, and house sitting gigs, always travelling onwards when things got difficult. There weren’t many waterfalls there, which perhaps explained the wonder on French people’s faces when I said I was from Niagara Falls. Admittedly, it would be nice to visit home more often, but returning feels like a regression. Waters don’t travel backwards, and little is more enticing than the prospect of a new beginning.
"Wong’s use of the waterfall is at odds with how filmmakers have mythologized them to convey sentiments of power and danger."
Hopping on a bus to the Mediterranean or hitchhiking into the Alps is far more attractive than sitting in an apartment to process my emotions, yet coming across a waterfall unexpectedly in the forest stirred up something new. Their flows have always been a symbol of home and comfort for me, which perhaps plays a role in Happy Together being one of my favourite movies, as Wong’s use of the waterfall is at odds with how filmmakers have mythologized them to convey sentiments of power and danger.
While Niagara’s reputation exists more in tourist guides than in film, Iguazu Falls is no stranger to cinema, whose sprawling cascades are the most recognizable on-screen waterfalls. Their thundering chutes double as Wakanda in Black Panther, providing inspiration for the epic battleground where T’Challa and Erik Killmonger face off. Indiana Jones and his crew survive a plunge over the same cliff in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, where impressive aerial shots show Jones descending into dangerous terrain beyond human control. In Moonraker, James Bond steers his boat full throttle towards the edge of Iguazu before making a swift exit on a hang glider, soaring over the angry waters below.
In action and adventure movies, waterfalls present a physical hurdle that a protagonist must overcome in order to survive. The hero acts quickly in order to persevere, whether it’s a last-minute escape plan or facing the possibility of death head-on. This differs from the way in which Wong uses Iguazu as a means of exposing an exiled couple’s false pretense of moving forward, reinventing the waterfall’s symbolism as an exterior challenge into an emotional one.
"Like Iguazu Falls, he moves forward, spilling all of himself onwards."
Happy Together’s doomed lovers Lai and Ho, played by Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung, are stuck in a looped climax of breaking up and starting over, constantly pushed towards and away from one another as they negotiate the harshness of being alone in a foreign land. The loneliness brought on by language barriers and feeling alien is something I felt throughout France, allowing me to see myself in their erratic behaviour, pushing themselves through an abusive relationship that no longer serves them. Lai and Ho aren’t exactly sure of when or how to move on, preferring their unhappiness together rather than facing Argentina alone.
Iguazu appears at the beginning of the film as the unreachable destination of their unsuccessful road trip, and is repeatedly brought up throughout the movie as a sort of symbolic Chekhov’s gun. It’s inevitable that the narrative brings us to the edge of the falls, representative of their dysfunction. As their Argentinian lives barrel on, it becomes clear that this fractured couple will never make it, neither to Iguazu nor together.
Standing in front of a waterfall, experiencing its full power in constant flux, at least you have the impression of moving forward. Lai and Ho have a desire to see something in motion, not something that reflects their own stagnancy. Wong shows us that a necessary part of exile is knowing when to move on.
Lai finally faces the waterfall alone by the end of Happy Together, musing, “I felt very sad. I always thought there should be two of us standing here.” Exile is best soothed with someone else, but standing alone, Lai realizes that it’s time to leave. Like Iguazu Falls, he moves forward, spilling all of himself onwards.
In 2020, Netflix released Kuang-Hui Liu’s Your Name Engraved Herein, a queer Taiwanese drama that some critics bore swift comparisons to Happy Together, namely due to a brief scene in which its brooding protagonist looks over Niagara Falls. Aerial shots of the Canadian icon flow through the film’s credit scenes, but I’m not entirely convinced that two sad gay men and a waterfall is enough to merit a Wong Kar-wai comparison.
Still, the link between Niagara and Iguazu is drawn there for me. Like Lai, I’ve felt the loneliness of exile, but in this case, my own exile is self-imposed. I forced myself to continue on in France even when I wasn’t happy, determined to make a beautiful life despite my own crumbling relationships. My family told me to just come home, but what good would retracing my steps have done? It would have been easier if there was a plunging waterfall to overcome, a blatantly physical feat that ignites a fight or flight response to minimize the anxiety of not knowing what to do next.
Instead, there was that little waterfall in the south, evoking the mists of home from its hiding spot between the trees, for nobody’s eyes but my own. “Anywhere new is fun,” muses a coworker to Lai, not long before he faces Iguazu’s roar. It might be fun exploring new places, but like Lai, understanding what does or does not serve me is the only way to keep moving forward.
I hear the rush of the waterfall before I see it, nestled downstream from a small creek in Southern France. Metallic water flows along its shallows like static, only noticeably audible once your attention is drawn to its source. “Waterfall” might be a stretch; it’s more of a slight downward incline that water pours over with surprising power, coursing inconspicuously through the trees.
Nothing about a waterfall is stagnant; not the river that brings you there, nor the swirling pool that cushions its blows. Waterfalls are over-the-top displays of nature’s brute force, their mist deceptively settling over onlookers with the gentleness of a first snow. Wong Kar-wai captures this flowing juxtaposition beautifully in his 1997 film Happy Together, a romance about a Hong Kong couple whose relationship chaotically unravels during a trip to Argentina, where they become stranded with no money to return home. South America’s legendary Iguazu Falls bookends the movie, serving as a symbol for Wong to explore the idea of exile, both from homeland and lover, questioning whether loneliness is best soothed alone or with someone else.
The film opens with aerial shots over Iguazu, a close-up where millions of litres of murky water pour over the cliff, shooting up mystical clouds of blueish mist that billow nearly as high as the cascade itself. The camera slowly curves around the open mouth of the waterfall with a handheld rhythm, leaving the audience in awe at its vastness. Despite its movement, the shot feels oddly still. The mist is only an illusion—a testament to the waterfall’s mythic proportions whose lack of physical grounding would let your body nosedive into the rapids below.
Whether on screen or in nature, the sight and sound of pounding water is an unexpected reminder of home, where I grew up on the banks of the Niagara River. The region’s three chutes don’t have the same untamed power nor height as Iguazu, yet they still enjoy a reputation as one of the wonders of the world. Although I haven’t lived there since I was 18, I still consider Niagara to be home, spending a week or two per year lounging around its shores.
For the past few years, I was floating around France between work, accommodation exchanges, and house sitting gigs, always travelling onwards when things got difficult. There weren’t many waterfalls there, which perhaps explained the wonder on French people’s faces when I said I was from Niagara Falls. Admittedly, it would be nice to visit home more often, but returning feels like a regression. Waters don’t travel backwards, and little is more enticing than the prospect of a new beginning.
"Wong’s use of the waterfall is at odds with how filmmakers have mythologized them to convey sentiments of power and danger."
Hopping on a bus to the Mediterranean or hitchhiking into the Alps is far more attractive than sitting in an apartment to process my emotions, yet coming across a waterfall unexpectedly in the forest stirred up something new. Their flows have always been a symbol of home and comfort for me, which perhaps plays a role in Happy Together being one of my favourite movies, as Wong’s use of the waterfall is at odds with how filmmakers have mythologized them to convey sentiments of power and danger.
While Niagara’s reputation exists more in tourist guides than in film, Iguazu Falls is no stranger to cinema, whose sprawling cascades are the most recognizable on-screen waterfalls. Their thundering chutes double as Wakanda in Black Panther, providing inspiration for the epic battleground where T’Challa and Erik Killmonger face off. Indiana Jones and his crew survive a plunge over the same cliff in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, where impressive aerial shots show Jones descending into dangerous terrain beyond human control. In Moonraker, James Bond steers his boat full throttle towards the edge of Iguazu before making a swift exit on a hang glider, soaring over the angry waters below.
In action and adventure movies, waterfalls present a physical hurdle that a protagonist must overcome in order to survive. The hero acts quickly in order to persevere, whether it’s a last-minute escape plan or facing the possibility of death head-on. This differs from the way in which Wong uses Iguazu as a means of exposing an exiled couple’s false pretense of moving forward, reinventing the waterfall’s symbolism as an exterior challenge into an emotional one.
"Like Iguazu Falls, he moves forward, spilling all of himself onwards."
Happy Together’s doomed lovers Lai and Ho, played by Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung, are stuck in a looped climax of breaking up and starting over, constantly pushed towards and away from one another as they negotiate the harshness of being alone in a foreign land. The loneliness brought on by language barriers and feeling alien is something I felt throughout France, allowing me to see myself in their erratic behaviour, pushing themselves through an abusive relationship that no longer serves them. Lai and Ho aren’t exactly sure of when or how to move on, preferring their unhappiness together rather than facing Argentina alone.
Iguazu appears at the beginning of the film as the unreachable destination of their unsuccessful road trip, and is repeatedly brought up throughout the movie as a sort of symbolic Chekhov’s gun. It’s inevitable that the narrative brings us to the edge of the falls, representative of their dysfunction. As their Argentinian lives barrel on, it becomes clear that this fractured couple will never make it, neither to Iguazu nor together.
Standing in front of a waterfall, experiencing its full power in constant flux, at least you have the impression of moving forward. Lai and Ho have a desire to see something in motion, not something that reflects their own stagnancy. Wong shows us that a necessary part of exile is knowing when to move on.
Lai finally faces the waterfall alone by the end of Happy Together, musing, “I felt very sad. I always thought there should be two of us standing here.” Exile is best soothed with someone else, but standing alone, Lai realizes that it’s time to leave. Like Iguazu Falls, he moves forward, spilling all of himself onwards.
In 2020, Netflix released Kuang-Hui Liu’s Your Name Engraved Herein, a queer Taiwanese drama that some critics bore swift comparisons to Happy Together, namely due to a brief scene in which its brooding protagonist looks over Niagara Falls. Aerial shots of the Canadian icon flow through the film’s credit scenes, but I’m not entirely convinced that two sad gay men and a waterfall is enough to merit a Wong Kar-wai comparison.
Still, the link between Niagara and Iguazu is drawn there for me. Like Lai, I’ve felt the loneliness of exile, but in this case, my own exile is self-imposed. I forced myself to continue on in France even when I wasn’t happy, determined to make a beautiful life despite my own crumbling relationships. My family told me to just come home, but what good would retracing my steps have done? It would have been easier if there was a plunging waterfall to overcome, a blatantly physical feat that ignites a fight or flight response to minimize the anxiety of not knowing what to do next.
Instead, there was that little waterfall in the south, evoking the mists of home from its hiding spot between the trees, for nobody’s eyes but my own. “Anywhere new is fun,” muses a coworker to Lai, not long before he faces Iguazu’s roar. It might be fun exploring new places, but like Lai, understanding what does or does not serve me is the only way to keep moving forward.