Review of Lan Yu (2001) by Rina J — 20 Apr 2009

Drawn from a novel anonymously posted on the Internet, Stanley Kwan's admirably audacious gay-themed Chinese film was filmed in China without the approval of officials, who surely would have been less than consenting to sanction the filming of a script which included frontal male nudity, sexually straightforward dialogue and allusions to Tiananmen Square and unethical businessmen.

As the second most populous country moves more into the realm of capitalism, homosexuality is still underground, yet in the bar favored by Handong, the central character, for shooting pool and picking up boys things appear more or less on the face. He picks up a country lad, architectural student Lan Yu who needs money to bankroll his education and welcomes Handong's overture just for the money until as expected he discovers that he too is gay, falls in love with the urbane exec, and gets dumped. Dumped, until, naturally, there is an about-face in Handong's situation which backpedals the roles.

The movie, set in Beijing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is opulently crafted, but it is also more or less superficial and creatively stilted. Hu and Liu lay consistent, realistic performances at our feet that glimmer with grief, yearning and sentiment, but their characters feel skin deep, and the film will in all probably prevail in appeal almost exclusively to its target gay audience. The very elementary story appears too obtuse and the progression of the narrative essentially optional. For a film as concise as 86 minutes, this is considerably tardy material.