So I will mainly describe the interesting points in Zero Degree related to Happy Together but also indicate the uniqueness of Zero Degree. The main points will be 1) the way to describe death and rebirth, 2) the way to describe sex and identity. The first point is connected to the second point nesessarilly.
According to S. Sontag, "To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of 'meanings',"2) She criticized interpretation by Freudian methods as violation of the work of art. "In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous."
However, Wong Kar-Wai often says that his works are some kind of 'dreams.' If so, why shouldn't we relive the dreams as analysand and interpret them as analyzer, instead of reviewing them as critics? Couldn't we audience also recover from psychological aftershock by interpreting the dreams? This is a startpoint for this funny experiment. This is not a review of the films. This is an analysis of my(our) dreams beyond the authors.
'Photography transform subject into object'(Roland Barthes).3) Posing for the camera is nothing less than seeing oneself by other's viewpoint. When you are photographed, you are no longer a subject. Being photographed, you experience yourself as 'subject-becoming-an-object.' Here Lai Yiu-Fai undergoes 'little death (micro-version of death)' in Barthes-speak. His 'I' is disappearing.
A photograph also compresses the time and burns the moment in itself. The immortality of material makes you realize the mortality of human. (Of course films and papers decay but last more than human life.) A photograph proves the absolute pastness of a thing, its death. When we see a photograph, we must ponder 'over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead.'
2.2. Sexual Act
In Happy Together, neither the scene in which Lai celebrates Ho's birthday nor their photo session appears. Instead, the screen displays their passports, some Polaroids on a night table and a sex scene. Audience may be surprised to see it as if they saw the climax of the film. They may be flabbergasted not because it is a homosexual intercourse and the performance of two famous stars, but because there is no context. Because it is not an average 'love scene' in ordinary 'love story.' There are just sex and ecstasy in the screen.
Ecstasy is also 'little death,' which is easier to understand than photography.
At the moment of ecstasy, one loses his/her memory. Georges Bataille called the moment you lose yourself as 'little death' prior to Bartus.4) He thought death was inevitably linked to the sexual act and sexual climax was a severe moment of crisis. Also Freud linked desire for sex to so-called 'death instinct,' the desire to return to the earliest state, total inactivity. They thought the sexual act mirrored the end and origin of life.
If the desire is repressed for any reason and once the repression breaks, one's desire for sex might turn to be an aggression for oneself or others. So the aggression that Lai Yiu-Fai often shows in the story seems to root in his repressed desire (or memory).5) However, his violence and agony are repeated because the repression is unconscious process (repetition-compulsion) and the key concept 'father' does not appear until the last half of the film.
As just described, the two films start with the level of 'little death' (=disappearance of 'I'). It is much like the condition in which a newborn baby doesn't have a self-image. Before long, one of the protaganist Lai moves on to the next stage where he confuses himself (subject) with Ho (object) and then runs through discommunication. It seems to be a longtime problem for him that he always 'starts over again' unconsciously.
The linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept and a sound pattern. The sound pattern is not actually a sound; for a sound is something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer's psychological impression of a sound. Saussure refers to the 'psychological impression of a sound' as the 'signal (signifying element)' and to the 'concept' as the 'signification (signified element)'. The names "Lai Yiu-fai" and "Ho Po-wing" are the signifying elements and the characters played by Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung are the signified elements.
Saussure argues that the relation between a sound pattern and a concept is arbitrary; that the linguistic sign is an 'arbitrary' relation. But since this contract is entirely arbitrary, the values will be entirely relative. The notion of value was deduced from the indeterminacy of concepts. The schema linking the signified to the signifying element is not a primary schema.
And when people lose their identities based on the link between the signified and the signifying elements, they show signs of personality disorder. J. Lacan defined the condition when the link between signification is broken and cracks appear there as paranoid state.7)
3.2. Mirror image and repetition
Indicated by various props such as a pair of pierced earrings, Lai and Ho seem to be mirror images. Lai sees Ho (and Ho sees Lai) as a mirror image of himself, but cannot see it consciously. (Lai says "I'm not like you" in the scene he is called prostitute by Ho in a hotel, and the scene he is suspected by Ho as "Have you had the janitor downstairs?" in the room.) While Lai cannot admit Ho as his mirror image, he also confuses Ho with himself. Lai sometimes attacks himself instead of directing his anger toward Ho (Lai breaks the mirror in his apartment), and sometimes attacks Ho instead of himself. However, Lai always finds himself back with Ho without any reason whenever he hears Ho's words, "let's start over," though he knows their relationship always ends up as breakup.
Why does Lai act in a repetitive way like this? Doesn't it seem to be unreasonable?
Lacan explained the metaphysical meaning of mirror images by using concepts as 'mirror stage' and 'imaginal.' 8) The human child is born prematurely, as contrasted with baby animals. Its experience, based on its uncoordinated motor skills, is of a world in bits and pieces. Born with senseless senses, unorganized organs, and disjointed joints, the child makes no delineation between inside and outside, between self and other. One day, however, there is a 'startling spectacle' in front of the mirror: The child finds himself/herself in the mirror. The child turns around repeatedly to make sure the mirror image (the other) is the 'I'. Then, the child's mother nods to him/her, "Yes, that's you," and the child recognizes "It's 'me'."
The child of this mirror stage is characterised by another repetitive action. "Fort, da" was titled in spirit from Freud’s observation of a child throwing a toy with an accompanying statement "Fort (gone)!"9) The child then delights in retrieving the object while exclaiming "Da (here)!" The anxiety of loss (of mother, in the child's case) is mastered in this repetitive game, literally with an object. As the child passes over from the passivity of abandonment and loss to the activity of the game, either Lai or Ho goes out and comes back to the room repeatedly. It's like images appeared and disappeard repeatedly in our dreams.
This self-image formed through other, however, is always endangered. The dual relationship between those who try to seek their self-images in each other's is always unbalanced like a pair of scales, like mother and child, or similarly-aged children. One might hurt the other when he/she struggles for being united into one with the other. A child in mirror stage often imitates the behavior of other similarly-aged child to get his/her attention. On the other hand, the child sometimes hits other child and says crying that he/she WAS hit. Lacan called this case as 'homelette' by the words 'homo (human)' and 'omelette,' which means the state when the separated egg tries to be one and ends up as squelched. The function could be described below.
By seeing my self in the mirror, I glance over the fact that the existence of this 'I' assumes a split between the self and the (mirror-image) other. The fact is that the 'I' does not pre-exist. In recognizing my self - in accepting the image before me as my self, I create a self before the mirror: this is I, as I must have always been. But this is also a misrecognition in another sense: I recognize the 'miss', the gap between my self and my image, and, in doing so, I am alienated from myself. Once again, I create a self before the mirror: this time, in the sense that I stand before it, to create this uncanny double outside of myself, which is me.
That is why the dual relationship is inevitably characterised by an aggressive tension in which the image of 'I' is constituted as another and the other as an alter image of 'I'. Those images are always mutually exclusive.
Lai's words before his suicide attempt in Zero Degree seems to indicate his strong irritation against the repetitive instability because of the dual relationship.
"You come and go as you please. I've never said a word. But I think this is the last time. Why should I always be the one lest behind? Two can play that game. Just watch me! I never really wanted to till now. So let's do it differently, tonight. Tonight, I'll go first."
After that, Lai and Ho lose their mirror images (self-images) when Ho leaves the room. The trigger is the appearance of Chang as the third party. Then also 'father' appears as the third party to make Lai redeem himself. The third party always makes a triangle: father intervenes in the relationship between mother and child, and the object of desire of the other and 'I'.10)