Lan Yu

CAST:
Liu Ye as Lan Yu
Hu Jun as Chen Handong
Li Huatong as Liu Zheng

STORY:
Chan Handong (Han for short), a successful businessman of a trading company, had met with nothing but success all his life. He was in his late twenties, and was enjoying whatever life dished out to him. His sexual endeavours were usually one night stands, and didn’t discriminate his sexual partners.

One day, an employee of his introduced Lan Yu (Lan for short) to him. A young boy of 16, Lan came from the rural countryside and had arrived in Beijing for his tertiary studies in architecture. Bewildered and broke, he had no choice but to turn to such means to earn money – selling himself. Through this encounter with Liu Zheng, (the employee of Han’s) he met Han who gave him what turned out to be a life-changing sexual initiation.

Set in the 80s in the beautiful Beijing, Lan soon fell in love with Han, and was very secure in his love for the man. Han, on the other hand, wanted to keep the relationship strictly a casual one, warning Lan that they would eventually break up if the relationship became too intimate. Yet, he was unable to stop his desire for Lan, and kept coming back to meet him. Though he tried to deny his feelings for Lan by keeping the relationship on a monetary basis and showering Lan with expensive gifts, he could not stop the strong desire he had for Lan, and the wish to be with him as often as he could.

Lan, on the other side, had fallen in love with Han from the very first time they’ve met. Despite Han’s efforts to deflect his ever-growing feelings by engaging sexual endeavours with other men, Lan tolerated time and time again.

REVIEW:
There is always a lot of hype whenever a gay film is released and the film's burden only gets heavier when awards and accolades come its way. Lan Yu is a fine example of such a film, as well as a victim of it. Based on an anonymous online novel, the Beijing Story, this Chinese film, winner of 4 Golden Horse Awards was perhaps viewed by many as a disappointment. Indeed, with the stereotypical story plot and characters, the film has no justification for winning the awards (Best actor: Liu Ye, Best director, Best editing and Best screenplay). With the shallow treatment of gay relationships portrayed in the film, touching just lightly on society’s perspectives on such relationships, frowned upon and viewed as taboos, and with the melodramatic and contrived ending, the film breaks no new ground. It neither created a new genre altogether, nor set a milestone in its storytelling technique, original plot settings and direction.

Indeed, the characters are typical - with Lan (Liu Ye) as the young, idealistic architectural undergraduate who was a novice in his search of love/relationship, and Han (Hu Jun) as the worldly-wise businessman whose every sexual encounter is nothing more than a casual fling or conquest. Their initial encounter, a business transaction of sorts, subsequent reunions and everything else that happens in between are the common tools that have been used to propel a zillion other love stories, straight or otherwise. How different can a love story of two people whose paths cross time and again get?

That said, the plot could not be faulted. Rather, the focus that Stanley Kwan had chosen was on the story of these two men, and had made no qualms about it. He focused on the leading characters’ interaction with each other, sometimes deviating to interaction between the secondary characters with them, driving the narrative forward without the audience losing thread of what’s going on. The action of the story was thus made tighter, without having secondary plots that distracted the viewer’s attention from the scope and main theme. A wise move made by Kwan indeed, having steered clear of the pitfalls that plagued many films that attempted to be epics. I don't really want to know about Lan Yu's family background even though that one single call to his mother showed another facet of his life. I don't really want to know what Han Dong's illegal business dealings were even though he did go to jail for a while (confusing the story just that one moment). I don't even want to know about the three-year marriage that Han Dong had with a brainy woman called Lin Jin Ping (Su Qin), or when Han Dong's family members became so comfortable with his sexuality. Very focused direction indeed.

Kwan allowed the direction for this film to be simplistic in all technical aspects by opting to focus on the acting. The gem of the film lies in the extraordinarily understated strength of the two actors, both in portraying the complexities of the individual characters and in concocting the intense chemistry that resulted. Here, you could feel Hu Jun's lip-biting vulnerability and loneliness beneath the character's steely exterior as the film progressed, and this is matched emotion for emotion by Liu Ye's delicate demeanour that gradually toughened and matured as Lan Yu sacrificed himself time and time again for Han. The latter's Best Actor win was a well-deserved one. Though the film was slow-moving and I found my attention span sometimes waning, there were moments in the film where I was caught off-guard by the characters' emotions and actually felt sad for them. The acting was perfect, in my opinion. They made the viewers feel for them, feel their emotions and most of all, both characters definitely had the on screen chemistry, which is something rare especially for such a role.

The cinematography is seriously understated. Shots are kept simple, and little panning and tracking is used. There is one long tracking shot where Lan had died and Han was in the car. The inside POV shot of one looking out of the car window created the impression of one staring into space, lost to the world. After all, one has to grieve silently for the loss and this sentiment was brought out very strongly just by that one shot.

Editing was kept to the barest necessity. There was no fanciful editing at all, merely simple cuts as transitions. However, images edited together, though simplistic in its choice, create a rawness that not only heightens the tension in the film, it also makes the film more endearing. For without coming out as a polished film (like Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together), it creates a surreal sense of one being there to observe the intensity of emotions coursing through as we see and listen the interaction of these two characters.

There was not much background music, which was a surprise. There was, however, a song that was popular in the late 80s or early 90s (I think) that was used in the whole film and it was played in its entirety when Lan Yu died in a car accident and portrays appropriately the sentimentality from both characters' perspectives. It was interesting to note that its first appearance in the show was played where Handong had mocked Lan Yu's love for him as they were driving down to the countryside. The lyrics really brought out how Lan Yu's love for Handong was not reciprocated in the same way. Yet in a rather ironic way, when Handong started to feel the same way but Lan Yu tragically died in a car accident, the lyrics of the song once again brought out the sentimentality of their love, Han's devastated state of mind when Lan had died and how truly he regretted not treasuring Lan.

Generally, the pace of the film is rather slow, allowing the emotions of each scene to rise to its fullest. Though at times, the editing seemed not in rhythm in terms of climatic tempo and turning points, still it managed to capture the very essence of the characters’ relationship, personality as well as maintaining the overall integrity of the film.

So, does Lan Yu deserves winning the awards? Personally, I would agree for the actors had acted their parts really well and were very much in character while director Stanley Kwan maintained a strict focus on the intended story without losing direction. That itself speaks volume for his ability to direct. Winning the best screenplay was well deserved for, in my opinion, the film has managed to elicit a gamut of subjective responses from the audience, drawing us into the story. A film whose plot can touch in ways others can't deserves compliment.. A film whose characters one can identify and empathise with deserves praise. To me, Lan Yu has both, and it deserves both my compliment and praise.