Lan Yu (Lan Yu)

(China/Hong Kong, 2001, 35mm, 86 min.)

Director: Stanley Kwan
Cast: Hu Jun, Liu Ye, Su Jin, Li Huatong
Awards: Best Director (Stanley Kwan), Golden Horse Film Festival 2001, Best Leading Actor (Liu Ye), Golden Horse Film Festival 2001, Nominated for 11 Hong Kong Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor

Lan Yu derives its plot from an erotic novel published anonymously over the Internet in 1997. Lan Yu (Liu Ye) is an architecture student fresh from the country in 1988 Beijing, a few months before Tiananmen Square. Desperate for money, he agrees to prostitute himself to a successful businessman, Hangdong (Hu Jun), and soon finds himself in love. However, the compulsively promiscuous Hangdong has plans to marry and have children some day. He warns Lan Yu about the dangers of becoming too emotionally attached, a warning that the doggedly romantic Lan Yu refuses to heed. The film chronicles their relationship over the course of ten years, through break ups and reunions, all against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Communist China that mirrors their turmoils and struggles.

Director's Biography

Stanley Kwan was born in Hong Kong in 1957. After studying communications, he worked as an assistant director and director on numerous features, documentaries and short films. Selected filmography: Women (85), Love Unto Waste (86), Rouge (88), Full Moon in New York (90), Actress (92), Too Happy for Words (92), Red Rose, White Rose (95), Yue Ye Yue Meili (96), Yang + Yin: Gender in Chinese Cinema (96), Personal Memoir of Hong Kong: Still Love You After All These (97), Hold You Tight (97), The Island Tales (99) and Lan Yu (01)

Director's Note

"Although I'm gay, I'm not particularly eager to deal with 'gay issues' in the films I make. This film came about entirely by chance. Zhang Yongning (who plays Daning in the film) found the original, anonymously written novel on the Internet and asked me if I would like to direct a film adaptation. I read it and found the passions in the central relationship interesting and so I agreed to make the film. In my last film The Island Tales, I made simple things too complicated. And so this time I've tried to make complicated things less complicated, or simple things even simpler.""
- Stanley Kwan

Critic's Corner

"Stanley Kwan made a very human, well-done melodrama with great emotions. It spans some sensitive times in China in the 1980's and 1990's with some fresh touches to the homosexual love story that ring true for depicting the Beijing life."
- Ang Lee, from an article by Steve Friess, New York Times

"Kwan comments wryly that he made simple things too complicated in his last film and so here aimed for real simplicity. His matter-of-factness in sketching the dynamics of a gay relationship makes this the most heartening 'gay movie' yet from East Asia."

Interview With Stanley Kwan

What did you think of (the original novel)?

I reacted rather differently from Zhang Yongning. He told me it moved him to tears when he first read it, but I stayed quite composed. I was mildly shocked by the novel's explicitness about gay lovemaking, especially in the early chapters; it's almost pornographic in its detail. It's a fairly short novel, only ten chapters, and I thought it was rather slight. I didn't think it was in any way a great piece of writing, but I did respond to elements in the central romance. At that point, I had no thought of filming it myself.

But after reading it a second time, I found myself relating to some of the themes and issues. For example, Handong's decision to get married and his desire to have a child. In 1992 my own partner William told me that he wanted to get married and have a baby; he saw it as a failing of our relationship that we couldn't have a child. There's a generation gap between Handong and Lan Yu in the novel, and Lan Yu understands himself better than Handong does. He's more direct, more honest. Although there's no generation gap between me and William, there's a similar difference between our attitudes to our sexuality. I think I'm as direct and accepting of my orientation as Lan Yu is. That was the kind of thought, which struck me when I re-read the novel, thoughts from beyond the fiction itself.

The novel is set in Beijing, but it must have been hard to think of shooting the film there?

I can't tell you how or where we shot it, but it's true that we needed to use some ingenuity. The producer and I hope that the existence of the film will help promote a more tolerant and understanding attitude to homosexuality in China, especially in government circles.

Did your lead actors have any embarrassment or inhibition about accepting gay roles?

The main casts are all mainland Chinese, and their attitude to acting is rather different from anything you'd find in Hong Kong. They take the characters they play as fictional, and don't make connections between the fiction and their own lives. It's a very professional and responsible way of approaching the job of acting. Hong Kong actors, especially those who are also singers, are almost neurotically concerned about their public images; most would be terrified about playing a gay role in case their fans would get the idea that they're really gay. You know, Hong Kong is supposedly more 'civilized' and relaxed about homosexuality than other Chinese societies, but the reality is that China and Taiwan are far more mature, and far less neurotic.

It's true that it's all but impossible to be openly gay in China, and that the issue remains more or less taboo in public discussions. But once you get past the surface reticence, you find that mainland Chinese gays are actually very confident and secure in their sense of their own sexuality.

- From an interview by Tony Rayns (Hong Kong, 18 April 2001)