Melodrama has been conceived as a mode of storytelling and a state of mind. Since the 1990s, the discourse of melodrama has gained much currency with its development in queer films. This study suggests that Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine and Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together are contemporary reflections on narcissism stemming from the myth of Narcissus and Echo. Mobilizing two important accounts of self-love, Julia Kristeva’s “imaginary third/other” and Jacques Derrida’s “hospitable narcissism,” this study interprets the intertwined relationships of the films’ lead couples in light of “Narcissus-as-Echo” and “Echo-as-Narcissus.” It also demonstrates how the two auteur directors adeptly incorporate musical and auditory elements from the ambient Beijing opera and the Argentine tango, respectively, to reinforce the imagery of the melodramatic setting. Identifying queer subjects suppressed in specific sociocultural milieus, the directors strategically re-envision these milieus in relation to the melodramatized motif of the self-other amalgam.