The Golden Horse Film Festival is not merely a huge showcase of nearly 100 acclaimed films, it also offers a an annual award, the Golden Horse Award (
Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan's (
PHOTO COURTESY OF CELLULOID DREAMS
Lan Yu is about a middle-aged business man, Handong, who meets a university student named Lan Yu in Beijing. Handong discovers Lan Yu's sexual orientation and is offered his first romantic encounter with a man. But with the age difference between the two and the class seperation dividing them, Lan Yu knows the relationship is doomed. They argue and make up again and again and even survive the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 together. Nonetheless, Handong later decides to marry a woman. Their several encounters after Handong's divorce prove that he cannot forget about Lan Yu and so tries going back to him and the good times they shared.
Shifting his focus from women to gay men, Kwan's narrative conveys moving elements which easily let the audience settle into the romance. What is valuable about Lan Yu is that it tells story set in Beijing from the perspective of a Hong Konger. By focusing on a universal story of love, Kwan has avoided sensationalizing the homosexual community in Beijing.
The film was selected to show in the "A Certain Regard" category of this year's Cannes Film Festival.
Another film dealing with Beijing is Wang Xiaoshuai's (
The film has excellent scenes of people's lives in and about the city's catacomb of hutung contrasted against fast-growing downtown Beijing, which has an obvious influence on the young minds of the main characters. As the film's Chinese title, The 17-Year-Old Bicycle, suggests, this is a story about growing up. And for boys in Beijing, growing up means being cool, street-tough, and slightly frayed around the edges, both physically and mentally. The film was this year's Silver Bear winner at the Berlin Film Festival.
Tsai Ming-Liang's (
The film received high praise when it screened at Lincoln Center in New York during a special September showcase for Tsai's films. One month ago, at the Chicago International Film Festival, it won the Jury's Grand Prize and also took honors in the Best Cinematography category, proving that Tsai's most recent work is another strong contender at the Golden Horse Awards.
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