Lan Yu

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
2001

Lan Yu
Stanley Kwan
Hong Kong, China, 2001
86 minutes Colour/35mm
Production Company: Kwan's Creative Workshop
Executive Producer: Qin Jian
Producer: Yongning Zhang
Screenplay: Jimmy Ngai, based on the internet novel “Beijing Story” by Beijing Comrade
Cinematographer: Tao Yang
Editor: William Chang
Production Designer: William Chang
Sound: Xueyi Wang
Music: Yadong Zhang
Principal Cast: Jun Hu, Huatong Li, Fang Lu
Production: Kwan's Creative Workshop

In his finest film since the days of Rouge and Actress, Stanley Kwan has returned to the basic principles of cinema: a simple, conceived love story; great performances from actors working without artifice; and a situation and place allowing for political and social commentary of a subtle and fascinating nature.

The film is set in Beijing in 1988, in the months leading up to the disaster of Tiananmen Square. On the cusp of middle age, Chen Handong is a successful businessman with deep Communist party connections. His loyal lieutenant, Liu Zheng, is one of the few people who know that Handong’s taste in sexual partners runs more to men than women.

In a raucous pool hall one night, with everyone getting sloppy drunk, Liu Zheng confesses that he has procured a boy, Lan Yu, for the bar’s gay owner. The kid is a student from the countryside and is desperate to try out anything for money. However, after he meets the boy for the first time, Handong informs Liu Zheng that he will be taking Lan Yu home himself.

Their sex is wild and passionate. They gradually become lovers and Handong begins construction on a house for them to share. However, the relationship is shattered by Handong’s infidelity with a pretty younger man. When political turmoil suddenly erupts, both men, facing the momentous changes afoot, try to remember the love that transformed them both.

To call Lan Yu a “gay film”—its two protagonists are decidedly homosexual and are on screen throughout the film—would be sadly limiting. Its ultimate themes are at once universal and local and have little to do with what men do in bed. This is a film about the fragility and ultimate necessity of love, even under the shadow of great events. It is also a remarkably specific look at China at one of its most crucial recent junctures—a time of hope and fear, mirrored by the emotional turmoil of Lan Yu’s star-crossed lovers.
—Noah Cowan