The images run before my eyes once again. I resist filling the blank page with my ideas. I fear that on this occasion, as on so many others, I will not be able to say everything about this political-erotic drama full of nuances and trust, that something will get stuck in my throat and I will not be able to express what I feel correctly.
Next to me lies, open to its last page, a volume of the story by writer Wang Xiao Bo, who became co-writer, which tells a story of oppression and torment set in a time and place where people were criminals if they were part of the community LGBT+. To understand what happens before my eyes, I need to drink from its most intimate and pure essences. That's why I go to the book as well as the movie.
I think I see A Lan before me touring the two parks, the East Palace, the West Palace, with its public bathrooms, more than in search of sex with other homosexuals, trying to bump into the policeman he has fallen in love with. . It all happens there, behind the Forbidden City, behind the doors of the Palace, in Beijing.
It's 1996 and Zhang Yuan, the Sixth Generation filmmaker, comes to my aid to tell me the story about a repressed and latent homoerotic relationship between a "master and a slave". I enjoy the intense and dark author's chamber piece that leads me to learn about the relationship between an openly gay writer and a police officer who refuses to accept himself because he is overcome by a strong internalized homophobia.
I glimpse Xiao Shi, the handsome man with big hands, those hands that A Lan loves so much, how he fulfills the young gay writer's dreams of being arrested and interrogated by a police officer, it doesn't matter to him if it's for "vandalism".
I witness Xiao Shi go from initial repulsion to fascination and finally attraction. I judge that the accusation of intolerance is not intended to be limited to the Chinese government, but rather to that which is manifested in all parts of the world regardless of the political regime of a given country.
I distinguish before me eros, death and sensuality walking the avenues towards sadomasochism. I sense a possible reconciliation and even the beginning of a romantic relationship between the gay writer and his captor.
I discover in Jian Zhang's beautiful photography how two worlds collide. I notice the back and forth, the initial imbalance of power between victim and executioner. I notice how the power dynamic changes between these two people over the course of a single night, in the middle of an interrogation.
I experience that the writer, from his playful kiss that left the policeman perplexed, to the confrontation between the two moments before the final credits roll, never gives up or shows signs of self-pity.
The images run before my eyes once again, and allow me to appreciate that the effeminate and masochistic, who may seem submissive, transforms, towards the middle of a film that equally transforms into both a power game and a gender performance, upon receiving the freedom granted by Xiao Shi to tell the story of his life.
I enjoy how he manages to turn the interrogation room into his own stage, where he is not only able to spread his wings and fly, but also to shout his love to the police officer.
I evaluate the analysis of gender and sexuality, the replay between pain and pleasure. I recognize myself, like so many others, in the feelings expressed in this film. I appreciate how A Lan can express that she could be a man or a woman, a goddess or a prostitute, the thief in love with her jailer.
I watch as the prisoner assumes the position of power and completely dominates (and even hypnotizes) his captor and all the spectators. And if there is one complaint, it is the script, for not giving a writer, like A Lan, more power over his words to counterattack the uniformed man, and only repeatedly using a single reason: "It's not disgusting. It's love. You can find me despicable, but my love is not".
I appreciate in the film the use of Piaget's genetic psychology and his atmospheric Fassbinder.
I allow myself another regret, the last one, I assure you, but one that affects the film not being much better than it already is: unfortunately, Hu Jun does not always seem to know what to do, how to function in front of the cameras, while his interest in the life story of the homosexual man he interrogates is not given the necessary nuance.
However, I vibrate as I listen to A Lan reply to the policeman, "You've been asking me this whole time. Why don't you ask yourself?" In this way, 'East Palace, West Palace' returns to itself the institutional inquisition that pursues queerness, asking about its own queer nature.
I open my eyes as the film plays with the limits and rules of attraction and seduction as one man's story becomes another's gateway.
I compare the film with that experience that we have all had of risking everything for the opportunity to be ourselves, whether in the search for love, sex, happiness, or simply those moments of connection with other people who can feel like oneself.
I sharpen my senses about how the film also explores the complicated relationship between gay men and the desire to feel loved by those in power, both in the figure of a law enforcement official and in that of the rich daddy that the writer once followed to his house, to receive the burning of the lit cigarette butt in his chest.
I believe that by turning the police interrogation process into seduction, Zhang Yuan's film subverts expectations as expected, and crosses the borders between pain and pleasure, between hate and love.
I distinguish that the emotional structure of the story and the enthusiasm that Si Han and Hu Jun put into expressing their lines make this film moving, beautiful, and shocking. It is a triumph for those who were handcuffed and imprisoned for their sexual identity.
I estimate that it is in that moment, as well as during the 90 minutes of footage, that we can appreciate queer cinema at its maximum expression of gay liberation, a political cinema at its most subversive and resistant, while analyzing how malleable the presentation of the human being to the world. Because the film also fulfills its objective of functioning as an intriguing experiment on the clash between the State and personal space, between the public dimension and private life.
The images run before my eyes once again, and I notice how the cut scenes, in magnificent and precise flashbacks, fill in the missing story of the mysterious writer's past of suffering.
I thus learn about A Lan's hidden desires at school, her relationship with her mother, the sad existence of "Omnibus" (Vicki Zhao), her classmate that anyone can ride; the public shame that the homosexual suffers, his first sexual experience, his furtive encounters in abandoned places with other gay men; how pain has led him to be the person he is, how he has preferred pain rather than being ignored...
In this way I understand the dreamlike epiphanies of the androgynously stylized Chinese theater, whose images also roll before my eyes.
I do not lose sight of the fact that through questions and answers the tumultuous life of the person questioned since his childhood is narrated, the difficulties that come with being homosexual in China, and how the brief intimate scenes of A Lan's life blur the feelings of the man who wear uniform.
I resist the idea that this gay film was written and directed by a straight filmmaker, especially since the portrayal of the queer character is riddled with stereotypes.
However, I applaud that 'East Palace, West Palace' escapes the stereotypical view of narcissistic heterosexual directors, and doesn't tell us one more tearjerking trope about the story of a sad, lonely queer man who has been oppressed all his life and accidentally falls for himself. falls in love with the apparently "straight" police officer who tortures him, because one of the strengths of the film is to present as the protagonist a homosexual character who has almost disappeared in conventional cinema on a global scale due to the horrific process of assimilation of the community and gay culture.
In this sense, Zhang Yuan uses all the queer expressions and traits that are most irritating to heterosexuals. He never sugarcoats the young writer's life and experience of sexuality, to interrogate the very core of homophobia and internalized homophobia, that self-hatred that the character played by Hu Jun feels towards himself.
I see the loud cry for help, both political and sexual, which in this case go hand in hand.
I see the amazing and moving performance of the real-life gay man. I was amazed to learn that Si Han was there as part of the technical team and was only chosen because the supposed protagonist dropped out at the last minute.
The images run before my eyes once again. Contrary to the way Western critics try to frame the film, I don't think the film criticizes the "authoritarian government". Firstly, there are no major differences between how an American LGBT+ film from the 90s criticizes the way society and the state approach homosexuality and what Zhang Yuan's film examines.
That's not to say it's all the same, but simply that certain sections of the public would like to use what was shown in 'East Palace, West Palace' as evidence of some specifically unique and more terrible oppression in China.
The truth is that just by watching the film, I do not feel or see the supposed repression that Western propaganda seeks to impose, ignoring, in the process, the realities of nearby countries. Clear example of political motivation.
I resist the idea that the topics presented are intended to explicitly attack China. However, obviously the film does talk about what is accepted and what is not accepted within any society, in this case the Chinese one.
But A Lan himself raises his voice at this, and expresses (paraphrasing): "we are all different and we walk at our different paces, but we are identical." That is, the repression suffered by the main character throughout his life can be similar to that suffered by any homosexual in any heteronormative and patriarchal society.
Even in societies that are supposedly more liberated with respect to homosexuality, such as the United States, from the beginning of 2023 until today there has been an unparalleled process of legislative violence and regression in the human rights of LGTB+ people.
I am referring to the approval of anti-LGBT+ laws by different states that openly limit different facets of the rights of said community, which aim to put the members of this group back in the closet, and which will begin in 2022 when Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, approved the Don't Say Gay Bill, whose text prohibits teaching any educational content related to sexual orientation or gender identity to students between 3 and 17 years old, and requires that the educational curriculum necessarily define he sex as "determined by biology and reproductive functions" and gender as "binary, stable and fixed".
I believe it is necessary to make these distinctions because too often legitimate criticism is used by opponents as incendiary ammunition. It would be an injustice to this film if it were used like this.
The images flash before my eyes once again, and I hear Min Xiang's music, while the audience gives a standing ovation to 'East Palace, West Palace' at its premiere at the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina, in November 1996, and at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.