• 刻在你心底的名字 (Your Name Engraved Herein)

5/29/21 (Sun)

A tear-jerker about two gay guys in Taiwan who can’t quite come out. It’s just after the military government was ditched in favor of democracy in the late 1980s, and attitudes towards homosexuality are still evolving, including the arrest of a gay activist, gay bashing in the school and family issues. A-han, a new student at a Catholic school, becomes friends with a guy who calls himself Birdy (after the war-traumatized character in the US movie of that name, also about two male friends). A-han is a more conservative type who wants to fit in with the crowd, while Birdy is wilder and less predictable. When gay bashers viciously beat a gay guy in a toilet (including lighting his groin on fire), A-han is inclined to join to prove his straightness, but Birdy emerges boldly from his hiding place in the stalls and takes the guy safely away.

The relationship between the two develops, but they never seem to make love. The free-spirited Birdy, in fact, ends up dating a woman, denying what we assumed to be his sexuality – that is never quite clear. A-han is devastated and confesses his feelings to a priest (a scattered framing device for the film), who does not absolve him. After other complications, the film ends bizarrely many years later in Niagara Falls (a Canadian company was an investor in the film and evidently took advantage of Canadian tax credits). The now-grownup kids run into each other at the funeral of the priest, who turns out to have been gay himself. A-han invites Birdy to come to his hotel room, but Birdy, resistant to the end, says no. A-han then decides to accompany Birdy to his hotel, where he’ll presumably be rejected again. In a nice coda, they look back to find their younger selves hanging out in the Canadian streets, passing around a basketball and singing the lovely title song.

The movie is relentlessly depressing, but that sprung less from the times than from the characters themselves, especially the shifty Birdy, whose motives are never quite clear. At the reunion in Canada, his ex-wife says that she realizes now that homosexuality is innate and cannot be changed. But if he really is gay, why does he keep A-han at arm’s length to the end? What was all that intimacy about? At one point, Birdy goes to A-han’s parents and tells him that he and their son have been fighting over a woman. I have no idea what that scene was supposed to mean. Given Birdy’s open flirtations with A-han and his bravery in defending gays, both during the gay bashing and arrest of a gay activist, the movie seemed to be setting him up as the trailblazer who would lead A-han to happiness. His actions later, especially his marriage and decision to turn his back on his friend, are inconsistent with that portrayal. Didn’t work for me at all.

The sex scenes are all negative: A-han frantically washes his underwear in a panic after a wet dream about Birdy, is unable to perform with an eager schoolgirl, is attacked sexually by an old man at a sanctuary, and forces himself on the injured Birdy in the shower and masturbates him. The two guys never have a romantic or even a matter-of-fact Brokeback Mountain-style session. There were homoerotic scenes, as when A-han sneaks a kiss from the sleeping Birdy and especially when the two run naked in the sea and sleep covered with sand on the shore. But those moments, though nicely portrayed, don’t amount to much. There was a scene after they’ve separated where A-han plays a taped song for Birdy over the phone, causing both of them to break down. I think that was supposed to be a climactic moment; I felt like I had seen it somewhere before. The film’s preachiness also became irritating.

There are references within the film that are probably meaningful. Birdy tries to fly off a ledge as in the American film Birdy, similarly landing safely. The film’s title is said to come from the John Donne poem about a man engraving his name into a window (changed in the Chinese title to a heart) so that his lover will never forget him. 

Both the main actors were good-looking and gamely carried out all the screaming, crying, fighting and other histrionics required of them virtually throughout. The priest, a French model, spoke amazing Chinese (to my amateur ears) and was good enough. I wish the director had toned down the melodrama a few notches, and his decision all of a sudden to bring in entirely new actors as the adult versions of the kids towards the end was alienating. The film was Taiwan’s biggest hit last year and the most lucrative domestic gay film in its history, but I can’t on earth figure out why.