Stanley Kwan

Had a mini Stanley Kwan film fest this evening.

Watched Lan Yu followed by Everlasting Regret.

Lan Yu won 5 Golden Horse Awards including Best Actor, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay in 2001. It was the opening film for Cannes Un Certain Regard that year.

Everlasting Regret just won the open prize at the Venice Film Fest this year.

Lan Yu was banned in Singapore after a brief run during Singapore Film Fest 2003. The movie features a gay couple. No wonder. It is now being shown exclusively at Lido, a bold step forward for local cinema. Sure there were scenes cut, but the story was still intact.

Everlasting Regret premiered not too long ago at the Venice Film Fest and stars Tony Leung and Sammi Cheng. Tony Leung is so good in this movie that I finally realise why he has talent.

i remember fantasising about Stanley Kwan making an Asian movie version of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro if there ever was going to be one. Him or Lee Ang. Lee Ang recently won the Best Director Award at the Venice Film Fest for Brokeback Mountain. I completely stand by my choice of directors. And the lead characters of Zhang Ziyi, Angelica Lee and Daniel Wu remains.

Stanley Kwan's movies are such intricate set pieces. He's fondness of using mirrors in movies can be seen over and over again in this movie. It's not cliched but necessary because it is his effort to show the entire setting while capturing the emotions of the actors in the film. He frames the people in door frames, window frames, plumes of smoke from the cigarette and at times an extremely fast-paced editing that cuts to the person's face it's almost like a buildup.

And the way he showcases love in both the movies is just amazing. Lan Yu has a similar characteristic as Never Let Me Go. It is that the setting and context is secondary. What is most important is the character development as the story unfolds. The gay couple in Lany Yu can be replaced by a heterosexual couple and still it would be a good story. But of course, them being gay added alot of frills. Similar to Never Let Me Go. The characters in the book may be growing up in any place and still the emotions felt by them should be universal.

Lan Yu and Everlasting Regret share a common observation. That love is not about ownership. Love is not about spending the rest of your lives together. Love is not about binding contracts that is recognised by society at large. If these were true, the story would have been serialised as a Korean Drama featuring lots of bespectacled korean men with highlighted hair and sad looking eyes. Not forgetting an accompanying piano soundtrack.

In the two movies, love is about respect. Love is about selflessness and unconditionality. Love is about a lifetime's association and not wanting any control.

For example, in Lan Yu, the money paid to the young lad for sexual services were all kept by him. He never thought of their relationship as that of a client and a prostitute. In Everlasting Regret, Tony Leung's character never did look down on Sammi Cheng despite her coquettish manners although he angrily told her off once. All the couples genuinely in love never did get together formally and were parted only by death. Not once did any party control another and their relationships maintained because of distance as opposed to familiarity.

Are we like the characters in the novels retold by Stanley Kwan? I think we are not. That's because we have stereotyped love and the love told in the story is so un-hollywood that we might not recognise them.

In Lan Yu, the question that begs to be asked is how religious groups view same-gender relationships. What good is a forced (false) heterosexual relationship when they are borne of falsehood or as a result of conforming to social norms. The fact that they are homosexuals can be incidental. Any relationship that is forced together by expectations will not work. So what if both are of the same sex? I bet there must be a million reasons why a homosexual relationship is wrong but the one single reason of two being in love should be sufficient to convince me that they belong together.

In Everlasting Regret, I find that Tony Leung's devotion to Sammi Cheng is the type that we all wish we can have. But it is also the type that we may never know we have until death.

I am going to be on the lookout for Stanley Kwan's movie.