AND THEY NEVER LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER
January 19, 2010 – 4:05 am
If cinema is the land of make believe and where things come up smelling like roses, it is homosexuals who seem to be having a hard time there as in real life. And in Scud’s quasi-autobiographical Permanent Residence, gays are never gay (in the end…). Stephen Tan reviews.
In 2008, screenwriter Scud (Danny Cheng Wan Cheung) created waves in Hong Kong cinema with City Without Baseball by showing full frontal male nudity. When he directed Permanent Residence last year, he upped the ante as the film is considered the most nudity-explicit Hong Kong movie ever made.
A sickly child, Ivan spent his childhood looked after by a doting grandmother in Mainland China but returns to Hong Kong to continue his secondary schooling. Later, a rising star in the computer/IT industry, Ivan (Sean Li) is asked, during a TV chat show, if he was gay by Josh (Jackie Chow), another guest, who is from Israel. While Ivan says he has never had sex with a man and the usual line, “I’ve got friends who are gay,” he never answers Josh’s question.
Spending his time in the gym, Ivan comes across Windson (Osman Hung) in the sauna. On his own, Ivan meets Josh again in a bar and the two end up having sex and forming a friendship. Knowing that he is leaving Hong Kong soon, Josh encourages Ivan to pursue Windson, “to have someone to cuddle at night,” as he jokingly puts it. Subsequent scenes show them at the beach at night, wrestling and sparring in the nude.
Despite Ivan’s deep feelings, Windson, who does not feel he is a homosexual, does not respond correspondingly though they remain friends. However, Ivan’s unrequited love for Windson does not lead him to any acts of violence. In fact, it’s the other way. He is patient with Windson (who does not want to be forced into doing anything) and goes out of his way to help look after Windson’s ailing mother. At the same time, Ivan has to put up with Windson’s trips to China, apparently to be with girlfriend Kelly.
And when Ivan returns to Hong Kong after attending his grandmother’s funeral, Windson tells him that he is getting married. The two then split up. In the ensuing years, Ivan becomes financially successful and, six years later, Windson looks up Ivan who has settled in Australia. Having drinks at a bar, Ivan suggests the two get married. Windson turns down the suggestion but spends the night with Ivan. In the middle of the night, Windson gets up, puts a picture of them together in Ivan’s sleeping hands, and goes off. Later Windson is shown crashing his motorcycle into the sea.
Unlike many films where the actors and actresses drop their clothings in the unlikeliest situations, Scud’s movies are more circumspect in this regard. The men, who look good and have good physique, only appear nude in the bathroom, in the sauna, on the beach, swimming in the sea and in the privacy of the bedroom or the home. And in the film’s only kissing scene, it is Ivan who plants a celebratory kiss on Josh’s mouth while shopping at the supermarket, to the surprise and shock of two women fellow shoppers.
But as another essay on unrequited love (which seems to be the basis of such movies), in spite of the emotional pain, Ivan is terribly good natured, with none of the stereotypical gay possessiveness.
Still, there is no denying the film’s melancholic and downbeat feel, which is signalled by the film’s opening black-and-white flashback sequence. A throwback to Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s coming-of-age movies (the narrator speaks in Mandarin long before the characters speak in Cantonese), the segment is infused with a feeling of nostalgia and longing and highlights the relationship between Ivan and his grandmother amidst themes of life and death.
It’s hardly a moot point that the film does not try to explain Ivan’s homosexuality (it’s a given, albeit tentatively at first) and, to the writer’s credit, there are no “villains” - characters just meet, connect, disconnect, move on and connect again - the way life is. The only blimp is the generosity (or self-promotion) Scud has invested in the Ivan character, who appears too good to be true. In that sense, he is almost as out of reach as the more down to earth and slightly enigmatic Windson.
If Scud’s earlier Life Without Baseball has a gritty feel (directed by Hong Kong new wave director Lawrence Ah Mon), Permanent Residence has replaced that film’s graniness with Herman Yau’s sleek cinematography and Teddy Robin’s chic soundtrack.
Permanent Residence is said to be the first part of a trilogy - the other films are Amphetamine and Life Of An Artist (also namechecked in the film). As with other similar movies - from The Torch Song Trilogy, Brideshead Revisited, Brokeback Mountain and TV series such as Queer As Folk - perhaps it is time filmmakers not make homosexuality such an insufferable part of the character’s life. If it was about a heterosexual couple, they’d be riding off into the sunset. And cinema is a dream machine? Or is that too much to ask.
Note: The Permanent Residence DVD (Panorama) is banned in $ingapore.
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