East Palace, West Palace

East Palace, West Palace
Zhang Yuan
Review by Francesca
(Spoiler warning!)

I like Chinese films! They are exciting, very dramatic and very, very beautiful. Films like 'The Red Lantern' and 'Farewell My Concubine' are films not easily forgotten. 'East Palace, West Palace' is such a film too. It is not as skilfully made or the story as professionally told as the other films I mentioned, that’s true but it is so unusual it compensates those minor flaws easily.

So is this film of any interest for Yaoi/Slash-fans? Well, both yes and no I would say. The film is undoubtedly very erotic and it deals openly with a homosexual theme. And the fans that enjoy a bit of a dark edge to their yaoi won’t be disappointed in that aspect. But the film is not as aesthetically pleasing, pretty and unworldly beautiful as yaoi-fans are used too. If you can get past that the main character’s love interest is no bishounen and their clothes isn’t very up to date or sexy and look under the surface then the film should be of interest to many kinds of m/m-fans.

The film is about a young writer of heterosexual romance novels. But he is homosexual and dreams of being able to express this in his writing. In China the climate is not very good for "different" people such as him and every night he picks up men in a park where gay people gather to steal some moments with each other in secret. The police are harassing them and one night a tall policeman arrests the writer. The policeman lets the writer go though. One day the policeman gets a book in the mail dedicated to him with love from the writer and when the policeman discovers the young writer in the park once again he arrests him for real this time. The writer is taken to a small house in the park and held over the night. A strange drama unfolds between the two.

The whole thing turns into an erotic titillating game with rather obvious sadomasochistic twists. The policeman is forced to confront a part of himself apparently very well hidden when he more or less against his will gets attracted to the young man and his strange urges to submit to him. The policeman treats the writer quite brutally and degradingly and forces him to tell him about his life. The writer’s story about his life is sad. It has all been about loneliness, alienation, humiliation and abuse. The policeman is shocked and feels sorry for him, that is evident but he is reluctant to show it.

The policeman’s treatment of his prisoner alternates between pity and despise, between friendliness and mistreatment. The writer angers him by challenging his views of himself and with trying to beckon him to admit his hidden interest in men.

The writer is not only gay, he is also very masochistic and this kink leads him into situations where he is humiliated and beaten but he is still a proud and strong person. The writer refuses to accept the way the society views homosexuals. He tells the policeman that he has been treated at a hospital for his homosexuality. They have been trying to cure him but he claims stubbornly that he is not ill. The policeman calls him disgusting and he takes it but when he calls his love disgusting he gets angry. Maybe he is a bad person but his love is worth as much as everyone else’s is.

The tension between them grows. The more the prisoner manages to tempt his captor the more brutal the policeman gets. And the more brutal the policeman becomes the more eager the writer is to express his love to him.

In the end the policeman forces the writer to dress up as a woman and he drags him off to some sleazy room where he alternately touches and kisses him and alternately beats him up. That last scene is pretty intense.

The policeman leaves the writer without looking back and we never get to know if this is the end between them or not. Most probably it is. Most probably the policeman has too much to lose to let his, maybe, true feelings come up to the surface. The homosexual, masochistic writer is fighting a losing battle for the right of being true to his nature. This society and is written and unwritten laws is too strong for him to oppose and China is not likely to change during his lifetime.

The film is from 1997 and made by filmmaker Zhang Yuan who is apparently heterosexual. The communist regime of China was not too happy about this film and it was banned. As I have heard it the film was more or less smuggled out to the west. The political turns about this film makes it interesting in its own right. This film is also called 'The Forbidden Palace'. 'Det förbjudna palatset' in Swedish.