Lan Yu (film)
| Lan Yu | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Traditional | 藍宇 |
| Simplified | 蓝宇 |
| Mandarin | Lán Yǔ |
| Cantonese | Laam4 Jyu2 |
| Directed by | Stanley Kwan |
| Produced by | Zhang Yongning |
| Written by | Jimmy Ngai |
| Starring |
Hu Jun Liu Ye Su Jin Li Huatong Luo Fang Zhang Yongning Li Shuang Zhao Minfen Zhang Fan |
| Distributed by | Yongning Creative Workshop |
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Release date
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Running time
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86 minutes |
| Country | Hong Kong China |
| Language | Mandarin |
| Box office | $3,847,964 |
Lan Yu (Chinese: 藍宇; pinyin: Lán Yǔ) is a gay-themed Hong Kong-Chinese film, set in Beijing in China, by Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan in 2001, and features full-frontal male nudity.
The movie is based on a novel published anonymously on the Internet in 1998. The filming itself took place in Beijing, without government permission. The movie, which was directed by Stanley Kwan, tells a romantic and tragic love story of two men. It is based on the Chinese novel 北京故事 [2] ('’Běijīng gùshì'’, [A] Beijing Story) by an author identified only as a 北京同志 ('’Běijīng tóngzhì'’, [A] Beijing Comrade), "tongzhi" being a term that today is often used to refer to gay and lesbian identities in China. Since this work contained positive depictions of gay men, explicit (by Chinese standards) gay sex scenes, and resurrected the ghost of Tiananmen Square, at the time, no mainland Chinese publisher would have dared to publish it, nor would the author be safe from government reprisals. Hence, its anonymous publication on the Internet. The story is set in Beijing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and makes vivid reference to the Tiananmen Square massacre. The film can be counted as a mainland-made movie as most of the crew are from mainland China. Lan Yu received a brief mainland Chinese run during the Film Association of Beijing University-sponsored '’China's First Gay Film Festival'’ at Peking University in December 2001. Although publicity for this film festival was mainly limited to the University's website, all scheduled screenings of this film quickly sold all out.
In the movie, Lan Yu (藍宇 / 蓝宇 Lán Yǔ), played by Liu Ye, a poor architecture student from northern China desperately needed money. (According to the novel, he was about 16 or 17 years old and a virgin.) It is the late 1980s. Meeting an acquaintance, Li Zheng (Li Huatong), who suggested to Lan Yu that the youth turn to prostitution, supposedly for one night only, to remedy his financial situation. Naively, Lan Yu agreed. That night, he arrived at Li's bar and pool hall to meet his John. While there, Li introduced him to a successful businessman and international trader named Chen Handong (Hu Jun). (Li is also Chen Handong's lieutenant and one of the few people knowing of his sexual inclination.) Lan Yu is evidently smitten for he left with the older man rather than the man he was to meet. The night they spent together was not only a sexual, but also an emotional awakening, for the boy. While Lan Yu immediately fell in love with Chen Handong, the older man, who was very closeted, wanted no emotional relationship, only sex. He tried his best to avoid any attachment whatsoever with the youth, instead he showered Lan Yu with money and expensive gifts. His efforts to turn Lan Yu's love for him into a dependent, loveless relationship failed until Lan Yu discovered Chen in the middle of the seduction of a young college athlete. Crushed, Lan Yu left Chen's apartment. They would not meet again until 4 June 1989, when Chen went looking for Lan Yu, fearing for the youth's safety amid the army's Tiananmen Square crackdown. Finding Lan Yu dishevelled and distraught, the incident reunited the two and opened a new chapter in their relationship.
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