‘East Palace’ Boldly Tells Tale of Gay Life in China

The setting is familiar the world over--a section of a big-city park where gay men cruise, but in Zhang Yuan’s stunning “East Palace, West Palace” the park happens to be the grounds of the Forbidden Palace in Beijing. The locale is crucial, for this means that this picture--even more so than “Farewell, My Concubine”--is one of the first modern Chinese films to deal so directly and outspokenly with gay themes.

Not surprisingly, it is an independent production and has been banned in China. Zhang, whose previous underground feature was the impressive “Beijing Bastard” (1992), a raw look at alienated youth set with a rock music background, has even been forbidden to go abroad to attend “Palace’s” various stage adaptations that have been produced in cities around the world. The film’s title refers to gay slang used to designate the two public restrooms on either side of the Forbidden Palace.

*

The film is every bit as bold and daring as its making. Naturally, park police harass, humiliate and sometimes arrest any gays they encounter, as they do most everywhere else. But A-Lan (Si Han), a good-looking young gay man, is different from the others. When a cop rounds them up, he refuses to run away or express shame for his sexual orientation; he looks the cop (Hu Jun) straight in the eye. A-Lan then steps up and gives the ruggedly handsome policeman a kiss, leaving him as startled as we are. A-Lan calmly strolls off.

The next time around, on night patrol, the policeman--we never learns his name--detains A-Lan, taking him to the park police station, a quaint Chinese-Victorian structure that might once have been a tea pavilion. The policeman’s questions give A-Lan a pretext to tell his life story, which we see glimpsed in flashbacks. The black leather-jacketed cop is a classic macho male yet increasingly intrigued by what A-Lan has to say; such a cop is also a classic gay fantasy figure. In a drama that has only two major characters, both Si and Hu, who has the more complex role, shine in superb, selfless portrayals.

Not surprisingly, A-Lan has had a hard life as a gay man in a profoundly homophobic society, but it has made him resilient and developed in him self-respect. What’s more, he’s a writer possessed of poetic sensibility, even though he can’t express it in the trashy romances he writes for a living. Brutal experience has shaped A-Lan’s submissive, even masochistic nature, and as such he has made a profound discovery: the paradoxical power of the seemingly powerless, a major motif in Chinese culture. The policeman doesn’t realize that in the course of a long night A-Lan will try to seduce him or at least bring him to some kind of self-knowledge. What A-Lan is attempting with such steady resolve is of course decidedly dangerous and a source of the film’s increasing tension and suspense.

*

What makes “East Palace, West Palace” such a threatening film goes beyond the seesawing of sexual dominance. The shifting power between prisoner and cop easily becomes a metaphor for an authoritarian regime and its seemingly most helpless citizens. You can see how the film could easily be adapted to the stage, yet “East Palace, West Palace” is a richly cinematic experience that comes alive in the imagination of a man who’s inspired rather than crushed by being questioned in an isolated little police station in a darkened park in the dead of night.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: The film includes blunt talk about homosexuality, some violence.

‘East Palace, West Palace’

Si Han: A-Lan

Hu Jun: Policeman

A Strand Releasing presentation of a co-production of a Amazon Entertainment Ltd., and Quelqu’un d’Autre production. Director Zhang Yuan. Producers Zhang Yuan, Christophe Yung, Christophe Menager. Executive producer Willy Tsao. Screenplay by Zhang Yuan, Wang Xiabo. Cinematographer Zhang Jian. Editor Vincent Levy. Music Xiang Min. Art director An Bing. In Mandarin, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 848-3500.