MovieChat Forums > Chun gwong ja sit (1997) Discussion > Anything special about gay relationship?...

Anything special about gay relationship?

posted 21 years ago by maia-9
10 replies | jump to latest

"If I can make you fall in love with a can of sardines in 'Chungking Express', why can't I make you fall in love with a man in this film?"
This is what WKW told Tony Leung when he had difficulty playing a gay character. In fact Tony had been told a fake story by the director and was shocked afterwards to find the role he was actually going to play.
Anyway I'm very impressed and amused by how WKW convinced him and I think it is the very idea he had when making this film.
Before watching it all I knew about the film was it's about a gay couple, and I thought it would something like a gay couple facing the problems which are peculiar only to gay couples. But I was wrong.
I don't see this film as a gay/homosexual relationship film. Do I see any feminine characteristics in either of them? No. They are both male, behaving and treating each other as a male. Do they have any problems being gay? Not really. After all I don't see any difference at all from a heterosexual relationship. They just somehow happen to be gay and that is all. I'm a hetro female and I'm not against homosexuality by the way, but still could feel their pain, sorrow, and loneliness because they are treated wholly as real people just like us, just like anybody, I suppose.

However, on second thought, I felt that there might be something that I was missing. Although being gay is not the issue in this film, they ARE actually gay and after watching it a couple of times it occurred to me that maybe there's something I would feel differently from other people, especially gay people out there.

So I'm just interested to hear how other people feel about this film especially about their relationship .

Thanks in advance.

[–] Dani_la_Star 20 years ago

I do agree with you.
I felt about the same thing. I'm not gay but I think this is one of the truest films about love and human relationships I've seen, one of the films that talk to me the most.
I LOVE THAT FILM.

SUNSET BEACH IS THE BEST SHOW EVER!

[–] gandalfba 20 years ago

i am gay and i have only watched this movies once... and indeed, this couple does not fit the global prejudice of gay men being womanish.

but i found it interesting how you described it. it nearly sounded as if it was a surprise for you to see that homosexuals can me "male" as well. shall i tell you what? most of us gay men are totally normal, we are male men.

just the way WKW depicted it in the movie. to us it's the most normal thing that one man loves another MAN... there are no thoughts about being gay, about the title "homosexual". within the moment of love, there are no worries about unfair treatment, about gay-marriage or about discrimination. what for? these things were set up in relation to the heterosexual world.
whereagainst the field of love is not touched by these aspects at all... it's clear and pure.

i think that people should accept that or at least recognize it. thus i am happy that WKW made such a "normal gay movie", i am really happy :D

cheers from germany,
Gandalf

''''''''''''''
jude art:
http://www.jude-art.de.vu
http://www.toxic-twin.de/dreamer

[–] maia-9 20 years ago

Sorry if my last post offended you, gandalfba.

it nearly sounded as if it was a surprise for you to see that homosexuals can me "male" as well. shall i tell you what? most of us gay men are totally normal, we are male men.

No that’s not what I meant. What actually surprised me was the way the director treated the homosexual characters in this film. I know you guys are totally normal and as I have stated I’m not at all against homosexuality. The problem was that I had never seen any films which described homosexual characters like WKW did. In fact most of the films (well I’ve seen only a few though) were sort of prejudiced like either of a gay couple was often feminine therefore were quite annoying to me. So before I watched the film, I thought there would be a ‘womanish’ character just like the other films I had seen, but I was totally wrong and was happy about that.
So I was actually comparing this beautiful film with other stereotyped films and I never meant that I was surprised to find gay people could be also ‘male’ just like heterosexual male men. :-)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts anyway. Was a very interesting read. :-)

Turns out that lonely people are all the same.

[–] Aulic Exclusiva 18 years ago

That's how you can tell it's a gay film: because, as in the television series Queer as Folk, gay people are treated as normal people, as we really are.

If the Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard, It can also be like a chicken-pox mark.

[–] noisy_silences 11 years ago

is this supposed to be a sarcastic comment?

[–] Aulic Exclusiva 11 years ago

Why would you think that?

Scostatevi profani! Melpomene son io...

[–] noisy_silences 11 years ago

Firstly, how on earth did you get to know I responded here? Do you get notifications?

Oh, I thought QAF was mostly about gays who were into the bars, flings, hookups and promiscuity -- at least that's were their focus was, or so I remember based on the first couple of episodes. So ... umm ... they didn't really target the whole of the gay population and show how they are imo. Your comment seemed sarcastic. Sorry if i got it wrong.

[–] Aulic Exclusiva 11 years ago

bars, flings, hookups and promiscuity

That's the life of most young people, gay or straight, in the West, at least until they get married. In QAF, all the characters evolve.

No one can target "the whole gay population", any more that anyone can target the whole straight population. But yes, bars, flings, hookups and promiscuity are the normal thing. At least around here.

And there is plenty of that, as well as many other wonderful things, in Happy Together, a great film.

Scostatevi profani! Melpomene son io...

[–] fl1 14 years ago

I'm not sure that homosexuality plays no role.
For instance, Chang: he's probably gay – he refuses proposals from a woman and he's interested in Yiu-fai, and he listens to the phone to discover if his lover is a man or a woman –, but they never try a relationship, even if the ending of the film suggests that now Yiu-fai is free from Po-wing and somehing may happen between him and Chang, a safer and saner partner.
Perhaps, if there were no prejudices and they were openly gay, they could approach each other more openly and Chang could help Yiu-fai dump Po-wing.

[–] ELashes 13 years ago

Thank GOD for movies like this one in which the orientation is a non-issue. In Happy Together, nobody's coming out and nobody's getting bashed, they're just people going through the same human drama as anyone. I wish there were more movies like this.