The space afforded by the Chinese government to provocative, independent cinema appears to be extremely restricted these days, at least to an outside observer. Nevertheless, from time to time a film like Man Man Woman Woman will emerge that forces us to reconsider what we think is possible under what we take to be the ever-watchful
eye of the authorities in present-day China.
Man Man Woman Woman (MMWW) was conceived and produced in 1999 in
Beijing by the husband and wife team of Liu Bingjian (director) and
Deng Ye (executive producer). It was written, shot, and developed
without official permission. It has played at several film festivals
outside of China (Paris, Vienna, Mar del Plata, Stockholm, Toronto,
Los Angeles, Singapore, Pusan) and won a critics prize, the FIPRESCI
award, at its debut at the 1999 Locarno Film Festival. Although MMWW
has shown at many gay and lesbian film festivals, the movie itself,
while it shows certain aspects of Beijing's gay subculture, is by no
means fully captured by the term "gay film".
Producer Deng Ye Talks
with Virtual China
Q: Why did you and Liu Bingjian decide to make a film about gays
in Beijing?
A: Our original idea was to make a movie about many Chinese
workers who are being laid off. The original story was about a woman
laid off from a factory, looking for a job. But we had some
difficulties. In the original story, there was a small role for an
individual in gay society, so we looked for a gay actor. We found a
friend who is gay and who is out in public: Cui Zi'en, the man who
played Gui Gui. He came to us, saw the original screenplay, and said
"This is nonsense, I will write you a better one."
continues
|
Doesn't Like Girls
It opens with Xiao Bo, a young man from the countryside, who arrives
in Beijing looking for work. He arrives at the address he's been
given, a clothing store owned by Qing, looking for his contact, a Mr.
Li, but no such person exists. No matter. Qing, noticing his healthy
and energetic appearance (and perhaps responding to the fact that he
is rather attractive) hires him on the spot. She also offers to put
him up at her apartment, where she and her rather taciturn husband
Kang live. The shop owner treats Qing Xiao Bo extraordinarily solicitously, even going so
far as to match him up with her friend Meng, on a blind date. After
several desultory encounters, Meng confides in Qing that she thinks
Xiao Bo "doesn't like girls."
Qing is surprised, then concerned over how difficult this might be
for Xiao Bo. She tells Kang, who later tries to rape Xiao Bo,
explaining that he is willing to have sex with anyone who is
available (his wife no longer showing any amorous interest in him).
Xiao Bo flees the apartment and the job, and moves in with his fellow
townsman Chong Chong.
"Public Toilet Time"
And so moves the film directly into one rather amusing illustration
of Beijing's gay subculture. Chong Chong is editor-in-chief of a
magazine called "Brilliant Toilets". He collects and publishes poems,
drawings, and graffiti from Beijing's public washrooms. Xiao Bo is
soon working with Chong Chong and the latter's live-in boyfriend Gui
Gui, distributing the magazine to bars and restaurants. Gui Gui,
played by well-known Beijing writer and gay activist Cui Zi'en (who
inspired and co-wrote MMWW's screenplay), is the closest the film
comes to an effeminate stereotype. But his "job" certainly is novel:
he seems to host a gay-themed radio show ("Public Toilet Time") on
his own "International Red Star" radio station, featuring poetry
readings and uninhibited classified ads. When Chong Chong starts to
transfer his attentions to Xiao Bo from Gui Gui, the latter leaves
the apartment, and broadcasts one last farewell programme.
MMWW is shot in a simple, clean, deadpan style. The cast, with
one exception (Yang Qing, a well-known television actress), are all
non-professionals. The film is almost a comedy: its humour has quite
a slow-paced, deliberate, natural feel. The movie lopes along, at
virtually one shot per scene, quietly observing its protagonists with
almost documentary-like detachment. In this respect, it is
reminiscent of Tsai Ming-liang's exploration of gay/straight
relations, Vive l'Amour, although it doesn't share Tsai's love of
formally perfect, aestheticized shots. On the other hand, it has very
little in common with the style or subject matter of Zhang Yuan's
theatrical, surreal East Palace West Palace (1996), the only other
example of a contemporary gay-themed, independent mainland film.
Gay Subculture
There is a certain disjunction between MMWW's spare visual style and
its story, a mixture of social realism and almost absurdist, utopian
comedy. The Xiao Bo - A Qing story is delicately realized, subtle and
understated. We never really know, for example, whether or not Xiao
Bo considers himself to be "gay". In a way, the movie puts that very
question into question itself: Xiao Bo seems hard to slot as either
strictly and obviously gay or straight, and the same is true for
other characters of the film's first section. Qing, in fact,
announces in her final scene that she's leaving Kang because she has
another lover, who turns out to be Meng, the woman whom she tried to
set up with Xiao Bo. In the "realistic" section of the film, gender
is pliable, open, undefined, and porous. Xiao Bo himself seems rather
passively to slip into a relationship with Chong Chong in the second
part merely because the opportunity exists. The less realistic,
toilet-literature section of MMWW has characters with more clearly
defined sexual orientations, but the more fantastical departures of
the plot surround this apparent clarity with something like virtual
quotation marks.
The film's real subject seems to be urban space: or how to create and
mark out alternative social and political spaces in contemporary
urban culture (in this case Beijing, but the model applies on a
broader scale). The overt "political" content of the film
lies in an affectionately exaggerated fantasy of a gay subculture
that feels free and confident enough to distribute magazines,
broadcast over the radio, and openly integrate into the urban life of
Beijing.
Independent Filmmaking
This model applies, not just to the gay subculture that the film
explores, but also to the film's own existence, to the independent
film culture it emerged from. MMWW, just by virtue of its
having been made at all, is a declaration of a free, existing, space
staked out for alternative, c in China today.
The care and determination (and considerable good fortune) of the
filmmakers, director Liu Bingjian and producer Deng Ye, who found
enough room within or alongside or in the interstices of the official
system to make MMWW, shows that their thesis can take concrete shape
in the real world.
But there's a long way to go. The film's negatives had to be smuggled out of
China and developed in the West, and the film has so far had a
theatrical life restricted to film festivals outside of China (at the
last minute, the director was "persuaded" to pull the film from the
Hong Kong International Film Festival). According to producer Deng
Ye, the film can be shown in China "maybe in ten years. For us it's
very important to have the film seen in China, to have it shown to
the gay community there".
MAN MAN WOMAN WOMAN
(Nan nan nü nü)
China, 1000, 92 min
directed by Liu Bingjian
produced by Deng Ye
written by Liu Bingjian and Cui Zi'en
cast: Yang Qing, Yu Bo, Zhang Kang, Wei Jiangang, Cui Zi'en, Yu Mengjie
Shelly Kraicer is a writer based in Toronto, Canada who specializes
in Chinese language film and maintains a comprehensive web site dedicated to Chinese film.
