Directed by Stanley Kwan. Written by Jimmy Ngai
Secret gardens are the best gardens, and blessed be those that find each other inside and the story of common intimacy that unfolds. Everything’s a little more sensual here, everything a bit more vulnerable. The outside, with its potential for judgment, scorn and undoing, makes the inside all the more alluring.
Stories of forbidden romances are often stories of secret gardens. These relationships provide respite from a rigid world, and are soft spots that allow honest embraces and genuine self-expression. It can be intoxicating for those involved, and in the hands of a talented filmmaker, it’s potent.
The story of Lan Yu is such a secret garden, and it revolves around the winding relationship between Chen Hangdong (Jun Hu) and Lan Yu (Ye Liu), the former an older, successful businessman and the latter a young student. What starts as a titillating affair with clear power divides evolves into a more complicated relationship where wants and possibilities begin to blur. Chen’s fine doting on this cute young thing with gifts in return for hot sex, but Lan’s relative inexperience sees him a bit more unsure and vulnerable.
The drama here exists in changing fortunes where Chen’s jaded ways and subscription to heteronormative values sees him deny his heart. Is he able to live his truth like Lan? Life has a way of getting in the way, and that it does in Lan Yu, in the shape of hunky bodybuilders in speedos, criminal investigations, workplace accidents, and the careless blunders every lover makes in a relationship.
The romance of Lan Yu is not a lush overpowering whirlwind of raw emotion and intense yearning, but an earnest, lived-in depiction of physical and domestic intimacy between men. Had it been released today, it’s hard to not imagine screenshots of Chen and Lan resting in each other’s arms posted to social media with #relationshipgoals tacked on in adulation, because it feels authentic, relatable and attainable (one hopes). It’s a brilliant quiet seduction.
But the precious moments and the difficulty of making them the rule rather than the exception prove not enough for Kwan, who sticks to the source material, a novel published anonymously online, and injects drama where you wished he wouldn’t. There’s plenty of prejudice and danger in the Hong Kong in which Chen and Lan live, so the rather intense external forces that announce themselves to raise the stakes feel overeager for hardship.
It’s a minor blemish on an otherwise fine film that surprises you with its frank depiction of male homosexuality, and natural observation thereof. The grounded presentation belies an incredible humanity and radical outlook, and it’s crafted with an attitude that what Lan Yu depicts is no less desirable and interesting than the hetero norm. It’s right, of course, and you wish Kwan would have stayed true to that belief in building his third act.
Mikkel Frederiksen 