Metrograph

A taboo-buster in multiple regards from Kwan, Hong Kong’s first openly gay filmmaker of note, Lan Yu treads dangerous ground in both its explicit reference to the Tiananmen Square massacre and its focus on the powerful erotic frissons that develop between two men in the period around the bloodbath. Adapted from the samizdat queer novel Beijing Comrades, also known as Someone Likes Lan, serially published online by an anonymous author in 1996, Lan Yu is an aching, full-bodied melodrama that sensitively limns the touch-and-go relationship between an influential businessman with a horror of emotional attachment (Hu Jun) and the skint architecture student (Liu Ye) he struggles to keep at a distance… at first. Showered with plaudits at Taiwan’s Golden Horse film awards, including a win for editor William Chang, a crucial Wong Kar-wai collaborator. “Masterly… Among the strongest of the wave of gay-themed Chinese features from the late-20th and early-21st century.” —The Guardian