Saturday, Mar. 10, 2001

Short Takes: Five Degrees of Sexual Ambiguity

By STEPHEN SHORT

Saturday, Mar. 10, 2001 | Hong Kong's currently midway through its 11th (yes, think 10 plus one) Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival and 80% of its heft is Asian. That's a record number for the gig and nine of those movies were made within the last two years. So if you've already seen "Hannibal" and the opera doesn't do it for you, direct your lorgnettes at this bunch.

Salubrious is Taiwanese helmer Hsu Li-kong's "Ye Ben" (Fleeing By Night), a forbidden gay love story set in the 1930's Peking opera world. Production values are high pedigree, as you'd expect from the people who brought you "The Wedding Banquet" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." The film also just won Best Picture at this year's Aspen Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

Daughter Ing'er (Rene Liu) welcomes home her fiance Shaodung (Huang Lei), an accomplished cellist from the U.S. who soon finds himself captivated with the opera Fleeing By Night and its celebrated lead Lin Chung (Yin Chao-te). Gradually Ing'er senses the growing intimacy between both men as Shaodung loiters around Lin Chung's dressing room night after night. Meantime, Lin Chung's also being courted by the local bigshot who forces him out each night for dinner and then sleeps with him. Shaodung and Lin Chung battle for the freedom to love one another against social prohibition, family obligation and Mr. Bigshot's attention. Sinuously shot and damn decently acted, "Fleeing By Night" should perform well on European and U.S. circuits.

Chinese director Liu Bingjian's "NanNan NuNu" (Men Men Women Women), set in Beijing's burgeoning gay culture with openly gay actors playing characters largely based on themselves, is a must. Xiao Bo (Yu Bo), a cute country boy, arrives in Beijing looking for work. He befriends Qing Jie (Yang Qing, the only non-gay actor in the piece), who offers him a job in her clothes store and a bed in her house where she lives with her homophobic, ample husband. Within two days the husband tries to rape Xiao Bo, who responds by taking refuge in the apartment of his gay friend, Chong Chong, who lives with a drag queen. In a cute twist, wife Qing Jie ends up walking out on her husband for her best friend (who happens to be female). The film features male nudity (though not full frontal) and boy-on-boy bed scenes, though the lesbian skein is left to dangle. Technically the film is very spare, raw and at times the camera too static -- but there's a bundle of beautiful oddities in this movie and it never hurts to have Faye Wong on a soundtrack.

Lesbians do get to play, albeit with discretion, in three strong movies. Taiwanese helmer Jofei Chan's "Incidental Journey." A young woman, Shian (the very elegant Wang Wan-jung), snogs, and then runs out on her female lover and hits the road. On the way she meets Ching (Wu Su-li), twice her age and still recovering from a failed lesbian relationship. The film depicts the pleasure of lost love in the face of spontaneous burning desire. The two women kiss and consummate, but then go their separate ways as the more reluctant Shian decides to rekindle her former relationship. It's a sharp, touchy-feely little number that I could have watched more of.

Korean Kim Tae Yong's "Memento Mori" is a contemporary teenage-lesbo-horror-psycho-casserole, which keeps its clothes on and takes the time to show emotional need, longing and the denial of love. It's a chick flick for the new world of Asian sexual cinema.

So too Japanese filmmaker Shindo Kaze's first film "Love/Juice," an am-I-or-aren't-I a lesbian story. Two roommates, lesbian photographer Chinatsu (Okuno Mika) and friend Kyoko (Chika Fujimura), do drugs, sleep and brush teeth together. They kiss and touch one another (Chinatsu shows the uninitiated Kyoko how to masturbate) but the latter recoils from physical love. It's a compact effort, though it's somewhat superficial narrative may ultimately be a metaphor for Japan's listless youth rather than a forceful examination of sexual identity.

The nine recent Asian movies are:

Memento Mori (Korea)
Love/Juice (Japan)
The Story of PuPu (Japan)
Looking for Angel (Japan)
Sugar Hill (Korea)
Men Men Women Women (China)
Incidental Journey (Taiwan)
Fluffy Rhapsody (Taiwan)
Fleeing By Night (Taiwan)