Popular reviews

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  Review by Chris 🍉 ★★★★★

  “Is that what you think?”
  “I really don’t know, and I don’t want to know. I just know that you’re good to me.”
  “Let’s change the subject.”

  The politics are kind of a question mark and the ending is an even bigger one, but the rest of it is just so perfect. The epilogue scene is so good it actually kind of redeems the abruptness of what comes before. Feels like it needed to be twice as long. Kind of want to give it 5 stars despite everything after reading a bit about the production and the novel it was based on … and I will!

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  Review by Noah Thompson ★★½ 2

  You know what they always say: Better to prepare for the worst.

  Pulling out ol' reliable with this and saying that although this was a gay drama that I found to be mostly boring and not very engaging, I yearn for a world in which boring gay dramas are much more commonly made around the world. Lan Yu came to my attention from my good Letterboxd friend Emma Fogarty telling me about this being the queer feature from Wong Kar-wai's mentor Stanley Kwan, based on how deep my love for Wong's Happy Together runs. Not a whole lot that did anything for me here sadly, but I can admire that it is mostly a mundane drama of sexuality and mostly…

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  Review by Dizzle_Sizzle ★★★½

  Destiny as lopsided, self-fulfilling prophecy, coming together to invariably drift apart as a lifetime isn’t in the cards. Is it better or worse to know too much about the one you love? A blessing in the interim but a curse in the long run? When you meet again, what is it about each other that’s changed, and are you willing to accept this in lieu of a simpler, impossible alternative, that nothing has? Memories ingrain themselves as firmly as beliefs, values and the habits they breed, personalities clashing alongside the lifestyles that cohabitate so long as they’re able and willing. Destiny now begins to masquerade as fallacy when a pattern repeats itself. There’s plenty of pain to be found whenever love’s lost, yet trying to forget is liable to hurt the most so long as erasure can‘t ever take root.

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  Review by J L ★★★★½ 2

  I had the great fortune of seeing the restoration of Stanley Kwan’s Lan Yu, an indisputable all-time classic in gay, Sinophone cinema, because back when this was made, any gay Sinophone cinema was classic, period. Though few key crew positions are held by HongKongers (including Kwan himself and William Chang – more on him later), this is a substantially Mainland Chinese production, and Mainland Chinese gay cinema was rare enough back then, getting rarer and rarer these days. So it’s to my great sadness that this restoration still hasn’t received US distribution, as far as I know, even though Kwan’s Rouge and Center Stage have been picked up.

  Anyway, it’s immediately clear why this stands out, even among the classics.…

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  Review by joshé ★★★½

  It seems unbelievable how it has been possible to get a movie that offers interest from such a simple and ordinary story. Undoubtedly, the preparation of a good script can have a positive effect on what is being filmed. But it is also that here there is a director who takes care of even the smallest detail of planning and editing to offer us a style, based on that well-known and melodramatic story, that is cinematically interesting. The shots are short when the director knows that he can do it, and the ellipses, so important in the language of cinema, are simple but well included so that the viewer does not need more to position himself. When a scene requires…

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  Review by Andrei Girard ★★★

  Pride Month 2023
  Film #14
  
  "I never forgot what you told me when we met. When two people get to know each other too well, it's time to separate. So I kept telling myself to love you a little less so that the end would hurt less."

  The compelling, naturalistic performances by Hu Jun and Liu Ye, carry the whole film. It's such a heartfelt, intimate and somewhat touching love story, yet it feels too restrained for its own good, narratively, not particularly insightful. I'm not a huge fan of this particular style of storytelling, because it doesn't always work, you got to be extremely careful with what you decide to show the viewer. In this case, I think it…

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  Review by Lilian Kong ★★★★

  ‘How could I have let you go so easily?’A nuanced sketch of homosexual love under other muddy circumstances such as the Tiananmen Incident and the economic boom happening in 1990s China. Kwan plays with an interesting tension between overflowing melodrama and subdued attraction, never directly showing how homosexuality is oppressed but instead making us feel a permeating restraint between Lan Yu and Handong. 

  At the end, we have a long take shot from inside handong’s car as buildings pass by, rendering us helpless in the transciency of queer love in postsocialist China.

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  Review by crimsen 泓 ★★★½

  how could i let you go, 
  how could you leave me in sorrow~

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  Review by Paul

  The best parts of their romance happen offscreen which is upsetting. It’s not hard to feel emotionally invested and what we get is nice but it’s just so rushed. The third act irked me as well all the way to the ending that annoyed me a bit. It’s a marvel that this was filmed in secret but it’s not considerably shocking considering how tepid it is. Intimate yet hollow. Glad I watched it though. I guess I recommend

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  Review by Maria ★★★½

  The poetic & the erotic & the political meet and merge to form a moving and restrained melodrama. It seems like a very necessary film in Chinese history, but also about Chinese history.

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  Review by ethanjame ★★★★½

  saw a restoration in theatres and a q&a with the producer:)
  gorgeously sensual and an array of emotive and physical chemistry its deeply sensitive and delightfully personal. loved the q&a also and hearing the story and passion which went into this film.

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  Review by Emilia ★★★½

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  This film is based on a novel anonymously published on the internet in 1998. The writer’s username is 北京同志, Beijing tongzhi, tongzhi originally meaning comrade, but is nowadays often used to mean gay. Lan Yu was shot underground –without governmental permission. The film was banned in mainland China, but enjoyed success both in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

  Although up to the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) homoerotic practices between men were common and even accepted. Westernization and modernization during Republican China led to the view, that restoring the strength of the nation was a proper control of sexual desire. During Mao era reproductive sex within monogamous heterosexual marriage was promoted, and homosexuality was seen as a crime. (In 1997, homosexuality stopped being…