Wong returned to the world’s most famous film festival in 2000 with his next film, the sublime romantic drama In the Mood for Love, which won the best actor prize for Tony Leung Chiu-wai. That film would subsequently be ranked in a 2016 poll by the BBC as the second best film of the 21st century.

Wong’s two follow-up efforts, 2046 (2004) and My Blueberry Nights (2007), were both selected to compete for the Palme d’Or. The Cannes festival’s rapport with the director reached its peak in 2006, when it named Wong president of the jury for that year’s festival, making him the first Chinese to be given the honour.

The loss still hurts – ten years on, Leslie Cheung is remembered

Released in Hong Kong cinemas on May 30, 1997, just before the handover, Happy Together would add to its Cannes acclaim by going on to win the best cinematography prize for Christopher Doyle at the 1997 Golden Horse Film Festival, as well as the best actor honour for Leung at the 1998 Hong Kong Film Awards.

Loosely inspired by the novel Buenos Aires Affair by Argentinean author Manuel Puig, the visually gorgeous film recounts the gay romance between two Hong Kong men stranded in Argentina – the capricious Ho Po-wing (Leslie Cheung) and the long-suffering Lai Yiu-fai (Tony Leung), whose on-again-off-again relationship proves as theatrical as it is utterly heartbreaking.

Taiwanese actor Chang Chen – then a relative newcomer after only featuring in two Edward Yang films, A Brighter Summer Day (1991) and Mahjong (1996) – plays Lai’s co-worker at a diner in the second half of the film, supplying the quiet company our lovelorn protagonist desperately needs.

As is often the case of a Wong production, Happy Together is bursting with curious trivia: from the innocuous fact that the lead characters were named after the film’s two assistant cinematographers, to one of the most notorious signs of Wong’s fickle nature as a storyteller – Canto-pop singer Shirley Kwan Suk-yee had a key part in the film, until she was completely cut from Wong’s final edit.

Footage from the four-month production in Argentina was later released in an hour-long documentary, Buenos Aires Zero Degree, which revealed some of the beautiful moments of shooting around the enthralling cocktail of tango bars, salsa music and, of course, the Iguazu Falls.

Happy Together was to be the last film by Wong that Cheung starred in – they collaborated on Days of Being Wild and Ashes of Time previously – before the screen icon died in 2003. Leung, Chang and Wong would all reunite for the 2013 martial arts epic The Grandmaster – although it’s Chang’s turn to suffer a “Shirley Kwan” this time as his role was unexpectedly reduced to a bare minimum.

Chang should perhaps have heeded the warning in Happy Together: it’s not always wise to “start over” in Wong’s world of perpetual regrets.

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