“When two people get to know each other too well, it’s time to separate – so I keep telling myself to love you a little less”

 

This landmark piece of Chinese cinema, spanning a decade-long love affair between two men set against the backdrop of political and social turmoil in mainland China, is auteur filmmaker Stanley Kwan’s queer classic. Lan Yu tells the tragic love story between successful businessman Chen Handong and shy architecture student Lan Yu, whose initial sexual encounter develops into a much deeper and ultimately life-altering bond.

Opening in late 80s Beijing, where the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre plays a prominent role in the evolvement of their relationship, the romance plays out over many years of hardship and conflict. Circumstances, often pertaining to rigorous social structures, mean the two men are periodically separated and never have control over their future.

While a mutual yearning always brings them back together, the pressure on Chen to conform to societal norms makes him agree to a hastily arranged heterosexual marriage that is ultimately short-lived. The film’s scathing commentary on China’s draconian attitudes toward homosexuality and individuality is most poignant when Chen must come to terms with his repressed feelings towards Lan Yu, who expresses his love early on, and confront the mistakes he made and the time lost. Although the film gives us the impression of a hopeful ending, as Lan Yu helps Chen avoid a long prison sentence and their relationship becomes accepted and open, ultimately nothing can prevent their tragic fate.

As one of the few openly gay Asian filmmakers, Kwan was particularly drawn to the source material, the homoerotic web-fiction named ‘Beijing Love’, and his film was independently made without government approval. Predictably, it never saw a theatrical release in Mainland China – explicit themes of homosexuality would never pass their strict censorship laws – an issue still as relevant as ever as Hong Kong’s cinema’s back catalogue is to be retrospectively censored. A prominent figure in the Hong Kong Second Wave movement of the 1980s and 1990s, Kwan’s work has not been as accessible to Western audiences in comparison to contemporaries Wong Kar Wai and Fruit Chan. With the recent 4k restoration of Lan Yu, in celebration of the film’s 20th anniversary last year, the Hong Kong-born filmmaker’s career is coming into a much-deserved stage of reappraisal.