Tag: LGBT

Immortal Story (海上花, Yonfan, 1986)

Posted on by

A young woman dreams of romance after meeting a Japanese boy in Macau, but finds that fate has other plans in Yonfan’s romantic melodrama, Immortal Story (海上花). Employing a non-linear narrative, the film opens in the early 1970s and shifts back 10 years as Ling (Sylvia Chang Ai-Chia) meets Nakamura (Tsurumi Shingo) who is in town for a few days while his school baseball team has a fixture in Hong Kong. Though the pair are smitten with each other, Ling never sends the letters she promised to write him, realising that she is corresponding with a romantic fantasy rather than a real person, while Nakamura apparently continues to think of her after returning to Japan.

Ten years later, Ling is discovered cradling Nakamura’s body in a hotel room in Macau and is presumed to have stabbed him with a fruit knife. The film then explores what led to this tragic ending through a series of flashbacks and witness testimonies through which it becomes apparent that both Ling and Nakamura have become somehow corrupted during their time apart. Even during her youth, however, it seems that Ling did not really believe in the reality of romantic salvation and was too afraid to pursue her relationship with Nakamura. After all, she could easily have sent the letters that she continued to write for the full 10 years, but preferred to maintain the fantasy rather than risk it shattering.

Instead, she drifted into an abusive relationship with a local boy who got her pregnant and then dumped her, after which she was rescued by bar owner/madam, Blanche (Yiu Wai). If Ling is caught in a romantic fantasy, then so in a way Blanche is too as it is clear that she is infatuated with Ling who will never return her affections. In fact, when Ling reveals that she plans to leave with Nakamura, she says that she feels indebted to Blanche but also that she has effectively repaid her kindness through the money she has made working for her as an escort. This is in a way Blanche’s tragedy, that in seeking to trap and possess Ling, she ends up ruining her while Ling feels only gratitude rather than affection. To escape the trauma of her life as a sex worker, she ends up turning to drugs from which neither Blanche nor Nakamura is able to save her.

What exactly happened to Nakamura in the intervening 10 years is never revealed, but it seems that he has ironically become involved with the drugs trade and is therefore partly responsible for Ling’s fate. He vows that he will get her off the drugs and take her back to Japan with him, but agrees to help her inject not only after they first reconnect but when they meet again in the hotel room before they’re supposed to leave. Blanche isn’t wrong when she accuses him of feeding on the blood of vulnerable people, though one could say she does the same in pressing them into sex work as she does with Ling. Unsurprisingly, Blanche is against Ling reuniting with Nakamura, but also asks why she allows men to hurt her, rather than accept the care and nurture Blanche is giving her if while, at the same time, harming her through her exploitation. 

The 1970s setting maybe crucial to making the timeline work as Nakamura states the reason he can speak Chinese is that he was born in China, though this “immortal story” feels like something that might have happened much earlier. There is a strong sense of nostalgia for a lost time of innocence and possibility, though Ling already seems to think that her future is out of reach even as a teen. When she reunites with Nakamura, it’s in a ruined building where she once used to live that is about to be torn down, hinting both that their romance has no real future and that it belongs to another time or may really never have existed at all outside of a mutual fantasy. In these early scenes, Ling is entirely dressed in a bright white, as she is in the hotel room, while as a tragic nightclub singer later she wears black like the ironically named Blanche. Their outfits often complement each other in a mix of black and white symbolising both the genuineness of their connection and the corruption stemming from Blanche’s line of work. In the end it maybe Blanche who is trapped within an impossible dream of romance, caught by the futility of her desire, while in a way freeing Ling from the torment of the shadow of an illusionary lover.

Survive Style 5+ (Gen Sekiguchi, 2004)

Posted on by

“What is your function in life?” It is, after all, quite a difficult question as an air stewardess (Tae Kimura) points out when interrogated by an irate British hitman (Vinnie Jones), and perhaps one that most people never really think about. Indeed, many of those questioned struggle with the meaning of “function”, replying with the most obvious answer of their occupation or job title without really considering any deeper implications or whether their existence is really meaningful. The hitman seems to have a secondary mission of eliminating those whom he deems “unnecessary”, while simultaneously giving his only sign of approval to a man who straightforwardly tells him that he doesn’t have one.

Gen Sekiguchi’s Survive Style 5+ is full of this kind of questioning but ultimately a tale of how one learns to survive in an often absurd world. Like many films from the mid-2000s, it cuts between several interwoven plot threads that at first seem nonsensical but finally coalesce into a complete whole. An artist (Tadanobu Asano) repeatedly kills his wife (Reika Hashimoto) who is forever trying to kill him in bizarre ways only for her to respawn back at their very weird Western-style country lodge in the woods. An ad executive (Kyoko Koizumi) becomes fed up with her vain hypnotist boyfriend (Hiroshi Abe) who mocks her career. A salaryman (Ittoku Kishibe) is hypnotised to think that he’s a chicken, and a trio of burglars (Kanji Tsuda, Yoshiyuki Morishita, Jai West) deal with repressed emotion and romantic longing. 

They are all to some extent trying to find some way to survive along with a sense of purpose in their lives. Ad executive Yoko is forever coming up with zany ideas for TV adverts that she records on her dictaphone, sniggering to herself at their surreal humour though she is the only one who finds them funny and her work is often dismissed by her corporate clients who complain that her ads don’t do anything to inform the prospective customer about the nature of the product. Sekiguchi was himself also a director of TV adverts which informs the film’s short and snappy style, and Yoko’s artistic frustrations perhaps echo his own as she tries to fulfil herself creatively while meeting the client’s demands. 

The CEO of the pharmaceuticals company she’s working with (Shinichi Chiba) is forever taking “emergency” calls from his wife about such important issues as the bulb having gone in the bathroom which he treats with the upmost seriousness while admitting that he really doesn’t know how to address any of these domestic issues. Similarly, the salaryman is prevented from living a full family life because of the demands of his job, but becomes a temporary hero after getting tickets to see the sold-out hypnotist. In someways, he might even be happier as a bird which after all offers more “freedom” if only he could learn to fly. While his wife and daughter are most interested in curing him so that he can become a stereotypical salaryman again and fulfil the roles of father and husband by providing for the family, only his son determines to accept his father’s new reality and love him for who he is now. 

The family’s home is designed with an artificial quality giving it the appearance of the set for a TV sitcom, bearing out the ersatz nature of conventional family life in which everyone is forced to bear out their particular “function” without imbuing it with much meaning. When the burglars break in, they too inhabit this space as if they were children who’ve come over to play by sitting down and playing cards rather than looting the place, though it turns out the family don’t actually have very much worth stealing. While Tsuda is forever taking calls from a girlfriend, Morishita and J exchange a series of longing looks but are otherwise unable to express their feelings for each other due to lingering societal homophobia and emotional vulnerability. Only when challenged by the hitman are they able to express their feelings after questioning their own “function in life”.

Jones was clearly hired for his hardman image which he’d successfully brought off the football pitch and into a series of gangster movies in the late 90s, imbuing each of his lines with an absurd intensity which is equally matched by Yoshiyoshi Arawakawa’s comical attempts to echo his intimidating speech patterns as his interpreter though without the physical presence to pull it off. The hitman is quite clearly a harbinger of death, but at the same time it’s his existential probing that points the way towards survival as his various targets are forced to consider what their “function in life” really is and if they’re living in ways that are meaningful and fulfilling. The film’s anarchic production design and deadpan humour add to the sense of surreality as Sekiguchi gleefully ricochets between one storyline and another looking for new modes of survival in an increasingly absurd world.

Survive Style 5+ is currently screening in select UK cinemas and released on UHD/Bluray on 19th October courtesy of Third Window Films.

Trailer (dialogue free)

We’re Both Grooms (僕もアイツも新郎です。Koji Tanaka, 2022)

Posted on by

Ryosuke (Shono Hayama) is about to marry the love of his life, Mizuki (Hiroki Iijima), but there’s just one snag. He’s never got round to telling his family or any of his friends that he’s gay, and a sizeable contingent of the wedding party are under the assumption that he’s going to be marrying a woman. A recent addition to the wedding farce genre, Koji Tanaka’s We’re Both Grooms (僕もアイツも新郎です。, Boku mo Aitsu no Shinro desu.) explores both the lingering homophobia in the contemporary society and the internalised shame and fear that prevents people from fully committing to what it is they really want out of life.

It is after all perhaps a little bit strange to meet your child’s intended for the first time at the wedding, but no one really seems to remark on the fact that they have no idea who the groom is supposed to be marrying. But then again, it seems Ryosuke didn’t invite half of these people, they were reeled in by his overzealous mother who, like everyone else, has made a massive assumption. That in itself may imply that Ryosuke doesn’t have many friends. He doesn’t seem to have invited anyone to the wedding aside from his boss, the headmaster of the school where he works, whom he also hasn’t told he’s gay leading to some last minute wedding speech panic. Though his boss is keen to assure him he’s fine with that sort of thing, it’s clear his original speech was full of misogynistic jokes and male banter, while his attempts to correct himself reveal a latent homophobia.

Meanwhile, a childhood friend, again invited by Ryosuke’s mother, is on the one hand hurt he never shared this part of his life with her, and resentful as it seems she had romantic designs on him that prevented her from pursuing other relationships. Mizuki has also invited an ex to the wedding who takes Ryosuke to task for treating Mizuki like a dirty secret, asking how they can live a happy life together if Ryosuke can’t even acknowledge their relationship in public let alone tell the world of his love for Mizuki. Mizuki is also starting to feel guilty and conflicted, realising that he’s insensitively forced Ryosuke into coming out because of his desire to paper over his own anxiety about their relationship through a public commitment ceremony. Japan does not currently legally recognise same-sex marriages, but Mizuki is hoping that the wedding will clarify their relationship status and what they mean to each other, only it seems to have backfired. 

The main obstacle is Ryosuke’s traditionalist, civil servant father (Mantaro Koichi) who outright tries to stop the wedding claiming that his son is just “easily led” and must have been led astray by Mizuki. While all of Mizuki’s family know and accept that he is gay and have also warmed to Ryosuke, Ryosuke’s family do not seem to understand and cannot get their heads around the idea of two men being in a committed relationship despite the grandmother’s public telling off of her son and unexpected announcement that she too is bisexual and that her first love was another woman. Surprisingly, Ryosuke’s father explains that he used to be a delinquent so he faced familial disapproval when he married too but was warmly supported by his wife. Though he confesses that he really just wanted to see Ryosuke marry someone who would make him happy, it takes him quite a bit longer to figure out that he’s trying to do just that. 

The biggest problem remains, however, Ryosuke himself who has evidently not reached the level of self-acceptance that would allow him to fully commit to a romantic relationship, as he’s advised by the ever-helpful wedding planner trying to keep the event on track. Only once he becomes more sure of himself, can tell people proudly that he is gay and that Mizuki is the love of his life, do those around begin to see the authenticity of their relationship and accept it as they would any other. Even Mizuki’s incredibly stiff father eventually comes around with a speech to the effect that the true beauty of life lies in diversity. Despite the farcical comedy at its centre, the film ends on a surprisingly touching note as the couple reaffirm their love for each other and also see it embraced by those around them.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Tiger (Anshul Chauhan, 2025)

Posted on by

At 35 years old, Taiga (Takashi Kawaguchi) is beginning to tire of city life and thinking of settling down, but as a gay man in contemporary Japan, there are limits to how much that is possible for him. Inspired by real life stories from the LGBTQ+ community, Anshul Chauhan’s Tiger is more character study than issue drama, but explores the ways in which Taiga’s horizons are constrained by the way society receives his sexuality to the point that he finds himself considering entering a platonic marriage as the only real way to ensure a full domestic life with the possibility of raising children.

As someone from the “Friendship Marriage” organisation points out, even the recently introduced partnership system available in some areas of Japan is a long way from a legal marriage and is geared more towards housing provision and hospital visits. It doesn’t confer inheritance rights for those who own property, or even the right to attend a funeral if the other relatives object. Child adoption is relatively rare in Japan in any case and not generally available to same sex couples while even costly options such as IVF and surrogacy could be bureaucratically difficult given the way the family register system works. 

Though the woman giving the presentation seems incredibly angry about the weakness of the partnership system legislation, labelling it “a disgrace”, it can’t be denied that Friendship Marriage is essentially complicit with the heteronormative views of mainstream society in which it is still socially and in some cases practically difficult not to be married. After signing up for the service, Taiga meets a woman who is half-Iranian and grew up in Tehran. It doesn’t occur to him that her decision to come to Japan was not made entirely freely and that she cannot safely return there without the threat of violence. Taiga may feel himself constrained, but he won’t be arrested or tortured solely for existing as a gay man. Nevertheless, he faces reduced options when it comes to employment and has never revealed his sexuality to his father fearing that he will reject or disown him.

Tensions come to a head, as they so often do, when the matter of inheritance is raised. Taiga’s sister Minami (Maho Nonami) is aware of his sexuality though does not seem altogether accepting and is resentful of his life in Tokyo which she assumes to be aimless and free of responsibility while she has had to shoulder the burden of caring for their ageing father alone. It’s obvious that she has been banking on inheriting the family home and is resentful on hearing their father has suggested leaving it to Taiga on the condition that he marries and has children, knowing that this is something that is not possible in contemporary Japan. The implication is that Taiga had no choice but to leave his home town in order to lead a more authentic life and essentially develops two opposing personas, that of “Tiger” the aspiring porn star and “Taiga” the would-be-family man. 

Minami later wields this duality against him, asking him to baby-sit her daughter Kaede to whom he is especially close, while threatening to out him to their father if he doesn’t agree to give up his right to the domestic space represented by their family home. His former lover, Koji (Yuya Endo), has entered a conventional heterosexual marriage without disclosing his sexuality to his wife and is riddled with regrets over not leaving with Taiga and trying to start a domestic life in the city as a gay couple. The Friendship Marriage system removes the element of betrayal, but also elides authenticity in providing a mechanism for each partner to fulfil social and parental expectation while avoiding disclosing their sexuality, and equally prevents them from enjoying a full and loving domestic relationship with a same-sex partner.

The film never particularly suggests that there is anything wrong with the way Taiga is living in Tokyo nor with his desire to get into gay porn, but merely highlights the sense of emptiness he feels as someone denied the possibility a full domestic life. There is after all a kind of age cap involved in his life as a sex worker working at a men-only massage parlour which he may fast be approaching even aside from the clients who like to exorcise their own sense of powerless by paying money to abuse and humiliate him. In the end, all he’s left with is an uncertain liminal space living as a literal stand-in marooned on the sidelines with no place to call his own.

Tiger screens as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Images: © Tiger Production Partners

Open Endings (Nigel Santos, 2025)

Posted on by

Is it acceptable to be friends with your exes? Charlie’s (Janella Salvador) bond with her friendship group made up of women who’ve all been romantically entangled at one point or another becomes a problem for her new relationship. Rafa (Rachel Coates) finds the situation altogether too weird, and even goes so far as to ask Charlie to cut her friends off. It might not be a good idea to date someone who tries to isolate you from friends and family, but Rafa claims these are just her boundaries and she can’t help feeling uneasy with Charlie spending so much time with women she’s previously slept with.

Then again, it’s not easy to be gay in the Philippines and this community is quite small. Can you really afford to cut people off just because of potential awkwardness? Each of the women is struggling in their own way, but tries to support her friends and is supported in return. The group only really formed as the exes banded together to look after Hannah when her partner passed away. Sundays have now become sacred to them as a time they can all come together and share their fears and worries no matter the various unresolved feelings that exist between them.

These relationships are often messy and ill-defined, but genuine and heartfelt. For Kit (Klea Pineda), friendship is most the beautiful of gifts and she fears acting on her feelings for Charlie because she doesn’t want to ruin what they have. Still closeted not wanting to upset her parents are religious and conservative, Kit is in an awkward non-relationship with a married woman who is also the mother of one of her pupils at the school where she teaches. Alexa (Yesh Anne Burce) is trapped with a heteronormative relationship she cannot escape because divorce is still not legal in the Philippines. Constrained by her own circumstances, she becomes possessive of Kit who is the only path back to her authentic self and the only person with whom she can be free. In other ways, however, perhaps the impossibility relationship suits Kit because she cannot be her authentic self either while unable to reveal her sexuality to her parents. 

The impossibility of divorce is also a factor when Hannah (Jasmine Curtis-Smith) suddenly drops the bombshell that she’s become engaged to a man. The group’s only bisexual, Hannah faces prejudice from her family who express relief that she’s finally got over her lesbian phase and rediscovered the right path, while the friends also see it as a kind of betrayal though perhaps only because she kept her new relationship secret from them for several months. Charlie is also subjected to homophobic violence when a man barges into the gay bar where she’s drinking and propositions her, insisting that she is “alone” because he’s only seen her with another woman. When he finally figures it out, he sees it as a challenge and quickly becomes violent. 

These kinds of petty aggressions remind the women of their precarious position within a hostile society that enforcers heteronormativity and traditional gender roles. Their friendship is a small bubble of resistance that gives each of the women additional confidence to continue being who they are. This atmosphere of hostility plays into Mihan’s insecurities, her far of commitment and inability to clearly declare her feelings. She resents Hannah for choosing to marry a man as if she were doing it because of social expectation rather than personal desire, while also forced to accept that this is all her fault. She had plenty of time to try and patch things up with Hannah, but never did. 

The open-ended nature of these relationships leaves Mihan with anxiety, but it also allows these women to continue being friends and supporting each other. The friendship doesn’t have to end just because the romance did. But at the same time, she has to accept that the risk of heartbreak is something that has to be actively embraced and her tendency to skip out on relationships the moment they become serious leaves her only with a lack of resolution. Painting a warm and funny portrait of contemporary queer life in the Philippines which nevertheless does not shy away from its difficulties, Open Endings celebrates most of all the joyousness and power of female friendship in the face of social hostility.

Open Endings screened as part of this year’s Queer East.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Girlfriends (女孩不平凡, Tracy Choi Ian-Sin, 2025)

Posted on by

Now in her mid-30s, Lok (Fish Liew) feels as if she were perpetually standing at a crossing waiting for the light to turn green. She made her first film five years ago, but hasn’t been able to make another one since. A producer likes her script, but tells her that with this kind of content they won’t be able to release it in Mainland China or Malaysia, so they won’t be able to recoup their investment. As he says though, the script can always be tweaked and if she rewrote it including a role for an actress looking for a comeback they might be in business.

But Lok doesn’t really want to compromise. Tracy Choi Ian-Sin’s semi-autobiographical Girlfriends (女孩不平凡) is in many ways about the of fear of being railroaded into something that’s not what you really want. After an argument with her girlfriend Bei (Jennifer Yu), Lok begins to look back on her life in reverse chronological order inching towards the source of her insecurity in her Macao childhood. At 17, she faced intense pressure to conform. As a member of the debate team, she’s tasked with making an argument for something she doesn’t believe in and resents being forced to say what’s expected of her rather than how she really feels. Her parents expect her to go a local university and become a civil servant without really giving her much choice in the matter. The older sister of a classmate, Faye (Eliz Lum) is the first person who asks her what it is she really wants. 

Lok finds herself watching 2004 Hong Kong drama Butterfly and trying to sort out her confusing feelings for Faye while secretly taking the exam to study at a university in Taiwan in the hope of living a freer life, if only for four years. There seems to be a part of present-day Lok that still thinks she’s on an extended holiday and will one day have to return to Macao and become a civil servant after all. She’s incapable of thinking of the future and seems to be mothered, to a certain extent, in all her relationships as her respective partners take on the burden of practical considerations like financial planning. Each time things start to get serious, she begins to back away, even ghosting her Taiwan girlfriend to return to Macao alone without saying goodbye.

Both the Taiwan girlfriend and Bei seem to want move back to Macao with Lok without even really considering if she actually wants to go. This assumption seems to further fuel her desperation and send her looking for an escape route. Returning to Macao with a girlfriend does not seem to be an option for her because Macao represents conventionality and the life she doesn’t really want but still deep down thinks she is unable to escape. Never having fully addressed her lost love for Faye, she lacks the courage to commit or to believe in a long-term future. Her apartment seems to be full of reminders of old lovers, while she remains uncommunicative and insecure. Using sex as a means of avoiding confrontation, she has a tendency to storm out rather than have a conversation and has never fully accepted herself. When her long-term girlfriend Bei starts talking about serious things like marriage and children, she tells her that she wants her to have a “normal” life, as if she were preventing Bei from having one.

Bei is indeed under the pressure of conventionality, nagged by parents who still haven’t accepted her relationship with Lok to settle down and marry a man. Lok’s family in Macao seem to have already accepted Bei as her wife, but still Lok can’t get over the mental hurdle of believing that she has a right to a future of her own choosing. After her script is turned down, she goes to the cinema to see The Lyricist Wannabe and over identifies with a line in which the heroine is bluntly told that if she’s spent all this time waiting and still not got anywhere, perhaps it’s time to consider another career. Her lack of success further deepens her insecurity as Bei practically points out that they do actually need some money coming in, and perhaps they might have to compromise their artistic dreams as an actress and a director under the pressure of living in difficult economic circumstances while planning for their long-term financial future. It doesn’t sound very romantic, but in a way it is. It’s only by looking back over her life and failed relationships and returning to Macao to put her past to rest, that Lok is finally able to stop chasing the ghost of Faye and gains the courage to seize the future that she really wants.

Girlfriends screened as part of this year’s Queer East.

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

The Outsiders (孽子, Yu Kan-Ping, 1986)

Posted on by

Released at the tail end of martial law, Yu Kan-Ping’s adaptation of Pai Hsien-Yung’s seminal novel Crystal Boys seems to anticipate a coming liberation, but also perhaps that even then not all will be free. The film’s Chinese title, Unfilial Sons (孽子, nièzǐ), hints at the way it, in a certain sense, circles back to a kind of conservatism in which the hero must reconcile with his abusive father for cultural rather than personal or psychological reasons. But at the same time, perhaps this reconciliation will be necessary at the time the present regime falls and speaks more of a need for peace as the authoritarian father must learn to accept that he has a gay son and will end his life alone if hex chooses not to do so.

Li Qing’s (Shao Hsin) father is, in many ways, a symbol of the authoritarian regime in that he is a former KMT soldier who came to Taiwan with Chang Kai-Shek after the Chinese civil war. Filled with notions of toxic masculinity, he kicks Qing out when he is expelled from high school after being caught having sex with a male lab assistant. Screaming at him in the street, he calls him a “degenerate” and tells him never to come home. Yet it seems obvious that Qing’s father has no real power and all his abuses stem from just this fact. His son’s homosexuality calls his own manhood into question, while his violence towards his wife also stems from his insecurity that she will leave him for a better man. She eventually does leave him for a trumpet player, abandoning her two sons the youngest of which dies as a direct result of his father’s neglect. 

Though Qing was a wounded, lonely little boy who felt himself rejected by both parents due to his mother’s obvious preference for his brother, he adopts a maternal position that comparable to that shown to him by “Mama Yang” who takes in “homeless birds” or young gay men who’ve been rejected by their birth families and have nowhere else to go. Qing was kicked out not only of his home but the school too, leaving him educationally disadvantaged. He can only earning a living as a sex worker in the Peace Memorial Park which has become a cruising spot for gay men. Pushed out of the mainstream society and left with nowhere to go, they have repurposed this public space as their own but are not safe even in here given the frequency of police raids. Auntie Mann, the former actress who lives with Yang, asks him where these young men are supposed to go if they can no longer go to the park with the consequence that they decide to formalise their situation by selling Yang’s photo studio and the building Mann owns to open a gay nightclub called The Blue Angel.

The club speaks of a need to carve out one’s own space in a hostile society, but also the commodification of gay life that accompanies greater acceptance. The park was free and money could also be earned there, but here the guests will need to pay because this is, after all, a business in addition to being a community hub. It also seems that for whatever reason, policemen are also drinking here, so it is not completely liberated and its existence depends on not offending the authorities. Nevertheless, it otherwise extends the family forged by Yang and Mann to a wider community of queer people by offering them a safer space in which they can be their authentic selves if only for a short time.

This seems to be true for Mann’s former director who seems to make a point of going everywhere with two very young and attractive women hanging on his arms, but abandons them to flirt with men at the club. Closted movie Hua Kuo-Pao similarly seems to have taken a liking to Qing, but must presumably keep his sexuality secret in order to go on working. Dangers are spoken of regarding the potential violence of obsessive love in a repressed community as Yang cautions Qing about entering an affair with Dragon, a man he meets in the park, who killed his lover Phoenix in a crime of passion and has been a wandering soul ever since having convinced himself never to love again because it would only end in death.

Yu frames murder as a moment of gothic madness as fog rises behind the bridge in the park, which was already a space of darkness and depression symbolising the degree to which these men are already isolated within their society. Another of the young men Yang takes in ties to take his own life after his lover kicks him out. Though the others tell him his boyfriend was not worth dying for, the problem seems to be more that being thrown out again convinced him he had nowhere else to go. If it were not for Yang and Auntie Mann, he would be totally alone. There does seem to be, however, a degree of tension in the relationship between Yang and Auntie Mann in which there exists a deep platonic love that cannot be resolved sexually. Just as he saves the boys, Yang also once saved Mann from an addiction to drugs, though he could not save her film career or hope for feminine fulfilment through marriage. The Blue Angel club finally only possible because of Mann’s acceptance that she will never be an actress again nor marry for love. Yang has been a kind of beard for her, helping her save face and avoid the stigma of being an unattached woman by making it look like there was a man in her life, just as she perhaps provided security for him in ways other than allowing him to rent his shop from her cheaply and have a place to live.

So tying into the film’s title, these new support networks play into a heteronormative vision of the family in which Yang becomes a father figure to Qing and teaches him how to live a more fulfilling, safer life as a gay man in contrast to his birth father’s authoritarian attempts at dominance. Another of the boys eventually leaves with a lover to look for their father in Japan, but seemingly struggles to find him reflecting the way in which each of them search for a more positive parental input having been failed or abandoned by their birth families. What they discover is a sense of brotherhood and solidarity that gives them a place to call home within the community. Nevertheless, the film ends with the symbolic gesture of Qing following Yang’s advice and attempting to reconcile with his father though an “unfilial son”, while his father too seems to have pulled himself together and is readier to accept Qing for who he is. This sense of homecoming for the homeless bird may then play into a code of familial obligation which could itself by oppressive, but also signals a new beginning and the opening up of a more liberated era.

The Outsiders screened as part of this year’s Queer East.

Angel in September (本番レズ　恥ずかしい体位, Takahisa Zeze, 1994)

Posted on by

According to Hitomi, she and Eriko were once lovers in a past life in which they were angels battling a demon army. She claims that she recognised Eriko at once, though never had the courage to talk to her at school and has only connected with her now after witnessing her transgressive act of stealing a lipstick from a convenience store. Aside from bristling slightly that in her past life she was apparently a man, Eriko goes along with Hitomi’s bizarre story until their relationship intensifies and it begins to annoy her. 

It’s not really clear if Hitomi actually believes what she’s saying or is making the whole thing up. It may be a way for her to try and articulate her feelings, framing the love she feels for Eriko as a cosmically fated romance that began with an apparently heterosexual union, though perhaps after all angels have no gender. On the other hand, perhaps these demons that they’re battling represent those who would stand in the way of their love. Though it’s plain that Hitomi looks at her with an obvious longing, she asks Eriko if it’s alright that she’s not a boy. When Eriko replies that it doesn’t matter, Hitomi sadly asks if anyone would do while doubting her own worthiness. Eriko laughs and kisses her again, maintaining dominance by assuring Hitomi that she will teach her as she gently removes her clothes. 

But it’s also clear that Eriko has other things going on and, in some ways, represents the demon to Hitomi’s angel. She messes around with men via the telephone club, essentially a hookup line, getting Hitomi to come with her as they go on a date with a middle-aged man they plan to extort. After she and Hitomi run away together, she sleeps with the truck driver they hitched a lift with in the next room as if deliberately torturing Hitomi who writhes in agony while being subjected to her moans. Unable to bear the torment she calls her mother and asks to be picked up. Which causes a rift between herself and Eriko in what Eriko sees as an act of betrayal. After dropping out of school, Eriko takes up with another girl and rejects Hitomi’s pleas to come back, telling her that she doesn’t want to be railroaded onto a conventional life of marriage and children that believes is all that school leads to. Hitomi may, in that sense, be more conventional. Her innocence is reflected in the fact that she’d never drunk alcohol and disliked it when Eriko made her try. She dresses in a subdued manner and is fearful of Eriko’s reckless behaviour.

Nevertheless, she too tries on Eriko’s persona by going on an awkward arcade date with a boy from the telephone club who takes her to a hotel where she sleeps with him, but evidently loathes the experience and tries to regain control of the situation by becoming violent and demanding money. Resenting Eriko’s assertion that she couldn’t be an angel because she doesn’t have a scar, Hitomi burns herself by heating a metal fork to mimic the Orion’s Belt motif of moles Eriko has on her breast. Despite accusing Hitomi of only caring about herself, it seems that Eriko too is using the fantasy as an excuse to reject emotional intimacy. The other girl she’s with accuses her of thinking of Hitomi while they make they love with which she appears to be unsatisfied and there is something in her that seems fearful of genuine connection.

When they finally reunite, the final time they make love mirrors the first with roles reversed as Hitomi gently removes Eriko’s shirt and Eriko reaches out to touch the brand on Hitomi’s breast in shyness and wonder. The Orion’s Belt motif echoes the cosmic nature of their connection, as if they had finally completed their journey home to each other. But the ominous undertones remain as Hitomi returns to her story in which she romantically sacrificed herself for Eriko by jumping into the water to quell the demons’ storm. In releasing the apparently resurrected goldfish that she flushed away in pettiness and anger, she lets herself go as, like the butterfly lovers, she and Eriko seem to be transformed into fish free to swim in the ocean. Delicately shot with the yellow hues of nostalgia, Zeze’s poetic tale of toxic, frustrated love ends on a melancholy note that suggests the lovers are bound only for a loop of eternal heartbreak in every possible reincarnation.

The Road to Sydney (Benito Bautista, 2025)

Posted on by

As a young person in Palawan, Sydney Loyola found herself the victim of toxic masculinity and a fiercely patriarchal culture. She recalls that her father once made her fight a neighbour’s son and threw her into a lake in what she then felt to be a rejection of her femininity. This feeling of being unloved by her father and responsible for the breakdown of her parents’ marriage has left a permanent scar on her life that continues to haunt her even as she begins the steps towards embracing her authentic self.

Shot over several years, Benito Bautista’s documentary follows Sydney through her transition having moved to the United States where she encounters a different kind of rejection and discrimination. A dancer and choreographer well versed in the traditional dance of Palawan, Sydney nevertheless had a survival job in San Francisco working for a property management company. When she told her boss that she needed medical leave to recover from surgery and that, on her return, she would be known as Sydney, he was apparently supportive. When she returned to work, however, the situation was quite different and her employers seemed to seize on any chance to dismiss her. Despite having sought advice from former fire fighter Mia who had undergone a successful transition in the fire service and assured Sydney that transgender people already enjoyed workplace protections in San Francisco she is eventually let from her job, forcing her to move out of her apartment, too.

But in another way, being forced out of her apartment is only another migration that acts as a fresh start at the beginning of her new life as Sydney. On reconnecting with her dance background, Sydney returns to the Philippines to choreograph a new routine inspired by a local folksong about a man who swore he would return for a woman. Sydney has done something quite similar, returning to reclaim not only her authentic self but her culture as rooted in the history of Palawan by choreographing a routine that incorporates traditional elements and western-inspired dance. Performed on the shores of a local beach, hers is a dance of migration inspired by the nomadic Batak people that reflects her journey toward becoming Sydney, embracing her authentic self, and eventually coming home.

Even in the US, Sydney had said that dance was the only place she felt truly safe while those who remember her from her youth in Palawan state that she was already able to express her authentic self even if she was too afraid of her parents’ reaction to do so openly. She recalls that she repressed herself and did everything she could not to stand out and be noticed, though the other children at school called her effeminate and bullied her. Even as an adult, she breaks down in tears wondering why people look down on others. Several of the other interviewees, some of whom are also from the Philippines, recall similar stories of being rejected by their families for not conforming to rigid gender roles.

Sydney says that she never felt loved by her father and suspects that his rejection of her was born of a feeling of inadequacy, that her femininity brought his own manhood into question. On reuniting with him, it seems as if her feelings toward her father may have been due to a lifelong misunderstanding, or at least, he doesn’t seem to remember her childhood in the same way she does and though the meeting is more of a positive experience than she feared it might be, she’s left feeling shortchanged for a lack of acknowledgment for all she suffered. Though she describes her mother as more supportive, Sydney also waited until after she died to pursue her transition fearing that it should be too difficult or her understand and cause further strain near the end of her life. Despite having gone to America to be free of this patriarchal culture, coming back to Palawan allows Sydney to come full circle by reclaiming her authentic identity and overcoming a past sense of rejection. Resolving her situation in the US and rediscovering old friends in Palawan, she finally arrives at herself and a moment of serenity having become the person she always knew herself to be.

The Road to Sydney screenedas part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival Spring Showcase.

Beyond the Fire: The Life of Japan’s First Pride Parade Pioneer (熱狂をこえて, Hiroaki Matsuoka, 2026)

Posted on by

Hiroaki Matsuoka’s documentary Beyond the Fire: The Life of Japan’s First Pride Parade Pioneer (熱狂をこえて, Nekkyo wo Koete) follows the life of Teishiro Minami who started the first Pride parade to take place in Japan in 1994. The film is not, however, an exercise in hagiography and examines Minami’s troubled legacy as someone whose attempts to control the movement ended up destroying it and leading to tragic and unforeseen circumstances. The parade has since been reborn under Tokyo Rainbow Pride which aims for greater inclusivity for sexual minorities and operates out of a community hub where all are welcome.

As for Minami, he was born in 1931 on the island of Sakhalin which was eventually taken by the Russians during the war. The family evacuated to Akita to live with his mother’s relatives, but his father refused to come with them and remained behind. This sense of physical dislocation and displacement only deepened Minami’s sense of rootlessness and lack of belonging having figured out his sexuality while hanging out with part-timers at his family’s shop. With his mother having to support the family single-handed, Minami was keen to start working and got a civil service job after high school working in the local prosecutor’s office. Once his father returned, he asked for a transfer to Tokyo and began looking for the mysterious “House of Secrets” and the gay world he’d read about in magazines.

But after failing to gain a promotion, Minami resigned due to a discomfort about the way of thinking at the prosecutor’s office. His repeated decisions to resign from most of the jobs he held echoes his forthrightness, but also an unwillingness to compromise or inability to work with others who might not agree with him. He quits his job in broadcasting in part because he overhears his colleagues using slur words and speaking disparagingly about men like him which makes his workplace an unpleasant and unsafe environment, though times being what they were he couldn’t exactly complain about it. Most of the men he meets at gay bars when he finally discovers them are unable to be out at work and some of them are married, only able to live their gay lives at weekends. Minami too gets married out of a sense of social obligation and to give his mother grandchildren. As an older man, he seems to feel guilty about the way he abandoned his wife and children to live a more authentic life, but also seeks no kind of reconciliation.

His path to Pride began with a series of gay-themed magazines and a meeting with international activist Bill Schiller who convinced him that the gay rights movement was something that could make a difference in Japan. Having travelled to San Francisco and witnessed the Pride parade there, he begins planning one in Japan but despite the success of the first event, internal divisions came to the fore. The biggest of these was that though Minami had followed Schiller’s example and included lesbians in the movement, he’d largely done it for cynical reasons and really had no interest in working with them, admitting to finding women difficult in general. Admitting now that he went too far, the real crisis arrived when Minami tried to turn the third Pride parade into an exclusively political event, banning outlandish outfits or celebratory behaviour. He intended the parade to end in a rally in which they’d adopt a manifesto he’d written by himself without discussing it with the wider community. When some of them protested, a member of Minami’s team was heard to ask what the women were even doing there, making it clear that the organising committee believed this to be an event solely for gay men. Minami then took back control by excluding women from the committee entirely.

In some ways, his story is a cautionary tale about how strong personalities with a need for control can derail a movement or risk turning it into a vanity project. A young man who’d worked as a part of Minami’s team and had stayed to mediate when protestors stormed the stage later took his own life in despair with the direction things had taken. Many had been uncertain a Pride parade would work in Japan given the levels of hostility and the risks involved for those taking part. Their fear was that no one would come, but attendance was much greater than expected and many joined the parade later, encouraged by seeing that others had already done so and they were not alone. Though many praise Minami’s efforts and activism, not only with the Pride parade but during the AIDS crisis, and acknowledge the importance of his courage in taking the first step towards creating a gay rights movement, they also question his methods and motivations. Using a mixture of animation, archive footage, and talking heads interviews, the film does its best to record this landmark moment in the history of Japan’s LGBTQ+ community through the eyes of an elder statesman but never shies away from his mistakes if only in seeking to learn from them.

Beyond the Fire: The Life of Japan’s First Pride Parade Pioneer screened as part of this year’s BFI Flare.

Trailer (English subtitles)