A regretful gay romance between a shady middle-aged Beijing businessman and his college-age paid consort. At the end, there may well be a feeling of "So what?" And yet, in retort to that, there's something refreshing, even liberating, about the mere existence of a gay film without politics -- without diplomacy, without "spin," without P.R., without Positive Reinforcement. That sort of thing seems next to unthinkable for filmmakers in America: the Happy Together sort of thing, to name another specimen made, like this one, in Hong Kong (by Wong Kar-wai). Director Stanley Kwan, of Rouge and The Actress, shores up the credibility, the autonomy, of his characters by dipping into their lives at wide intervals, as if at various ports along a river, coming at events from oblique angles instead of head on, staking out a convenient observation point and letting the action flow past, free of manipulation. Quite apart from all that, the film is undeniably underlit. Hu Jun, Liu Ye, Su Jin. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd
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