The Hongkong film Meishaonian zhi, directed by Yonfan, has had several retitlings. One title, Bishonen, translates Beauty, though another title is Double Life of a Cop. Regardless, the film is a love story involving gay men in Hongkong that tries to provide fictional background for a scandal within the port city in which a prominent business executive possessed pornographic pictures of members of the Hongkong police. With occasional flashbacks, voiceovers by an unidentified person (Brigitte Lin) tie together love several love triangles but ultimately make the point that gay love is more than just sex and is often tragically romantic, that is, unrequited. The focus is on two Chinese men in a Hongkong where gay life is not well understood, therefore forbidden and secret. The early part of the film focuses on Jet (played by Stephen Fung), who is a street hustler when he is not fraternizing with other callboys at the SM Bay Club run by Tsu (played by Cheung Tat-Ming). The club provides a home for the men, who have probably been disowned by their parents; a weeping mother, for example, begs her callboy son to return home, but he doubtless knows that his father will just throw him out again. One day, Sam (played by Daniel Wu), a Hongkong police officer (who recruits other police to take off their clothes for money), gives Jet the eye as he walks down the street with his girlfriend, Lesbian Kana (played by Shu Qi). Jet is enticed into trying to find him again, and indeed the two later connect. Both men have had previous unsuccessful love affairs. Unknown to Jet, Sam previously carried on with narcissistic pop star K. S. (played by Jason Tsang) before he became famous. Jet's affairs have been more short term. In any case, Sam soon invites Jet home for dinner, where he meets his father (played by Kenneth Tsang) and mother (Chiao Chiao). Jet feels so much at home that he returns to help his mother with domestic duties, and yet neither parent suspects that their son is gay. Sam is eager to please his father by following in his footsteps as a police officer, though he retired due to on-the-job corruption and now works as a taxi driver. The fact that an unidentified narrator tells the story in a sad tone of voice is the clue that a tragic ending for Sam is in store. Despite winning awards at film festivals around the world, the movie's sole commercial run in the United States was in San Francisco. In Hongkong, the film has perhaps played a role in opening the way for gay life to come out of the closet. And videos abound for those who want to treasure one of the most sensitive treatments of gay life in Asia. MH
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