The Paradox of Romance in Tango

A Close-Reading of Wong Kar Wai’s Films of Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, and Fallen Angles

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-170-8_49How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Wong Kar-Wai; Tango; Happy Together; In the Mood for Love; Fallen Angles

Abstract

Tango, a partner dance, has been widely seen in romantic films. Hong Kong film director Wong Kar-wai is renowned for his depictions of intense, complex romantic relationships infused with dramatic conflict. Tango is one indispensable element that is repeatedly used in Wong’s films. By exploring the role of tango in the film Happy Together, compared with two of Wong’s films, In the Mood for Love and Fallen Angles, this paper provides a cross-reading of Wong’s films better to understand the characters’ behaviors and inner impulses. This paper argues that the “embrace and resist” movement of tango crystalizes the characters’ practices of complicated love. Emotional feelings are established and undermined through role-playing in dance and everyday life. Repressed sexual energy can be a symbol of taboo. Bodies are highly sexualized to evoke passion.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yirong Yin
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/12/31
TI  - The Paradox of Romance in Tango
BT  - Proceedings of the  2023 5th International Conference on Literature, Art and Human Development (ICLAHD 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 436
EP  - 447
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-170-8_49
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-170-8_49
ID  - Yin2023
ER  -