Lan Yu
Short description
Lan Yu is a Hong Kong-China drama about a relationship that begins in Beijing in the late 1980s. Chen Handong is a businessman running a brokerage firm that is doing well. He prefers the company of men, and a business associate introduces him to Lan Yu, an architecture student from the countryside who is short of money and has considered sex work. What starts as a single encounter becomes more complicated: Lan Yu falls in love, while Chen Handong keeps the relationship physical and avoids commitment, leaving Lan Yu emotionally dependent on him. The story unfolds against the political upheaval in Beijing in 1989.
Stanley Kwan directed, working from a screenplay by Jimmy Ngai Shiu-Yan, with Yongning Zhang producing. Hu Jun plays Chen Handong and Liu Ye plays Lan Yu, supported by Li Shuang, Fang Lu, Zhang Shaohua and Yongning Zhang. It runs 87 minutes. The film sits between Kwan's Center Stage, from 1991, and First Night Nerves, from 2019, the fourth of the five features he directed across that chronology.
It was released in May 2001 and took about 4 million USD worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.2 out of 10 from roughly 3,400 votes, and on TMDB it also stands at 7.2 out of 10, from 69 votes. The two audiences agree closely, and the smaller TMDB sample points to a limited international viewership.
What's left behind the scenes
- The plot of the film is based on the novel "Beijing Story," which was published anonymously on the internet in 1996. Because the novel tells a tragic love story between two men and mentions the events at Tiananmen Square, the author could have faced repression. The film was shot in Beijing without government permission. It was banned in China itself but was distributed through private channels.
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