lan yu

Director: stanley kwan

Actor: ye liu,jun hu,bin li,huatong li

Data Published: Thu Nov 22 2001

Genres: Drama,Romance

Key Words: student,shower,bar,gay,reference to la vie en rose the song

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292066/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lan_Yu_(film)

Description: Lan Yu is a movie starring Ye Liu, Jun Hu, and Bin Li. A young, gay student has a relationship with an older, successful businessman. The handsome playboy-businessman must choose between his comfortable, yet closeted straight life,...

Plot: In the movie, Lan Yu (藍宇 / 蓝宇 Lán Yǔ), played by Liu Ye, a poor architecture student from northern China desperately needed money. (According to the novel, he was about 16 or 17 years old and a virgin.) It is the late 1980s. Meeting an acquaintance, Li Zheng (Li Huatong), who suggested to Lan Yu that the youth turn to prostitution, supposedly for one night only, to remedy his financial situation. Naively, Lan Yu agreed. That night, he arrived at Li's bar and pool hall to meet his John. While there, Li introduced him to a successful businessman and international trader named Chen Handong (Hu Jun). (Li is also Chen Handong's lieutenant and one of the few people knowing of his sexual inclination.) Lan Yu is evidently smitten for he left with the older man rather than the man he was to meet. The night they spent together was not only a sexual, but also an emotional awakening, for the boy. While Lan Yu immediately fell in love with Chen Handong, the older man, who was very closeted, wanted no emotional relationship, only sex. He tried his best to avoid any attachment whatsoever with the youth, instead he showered Lan Yu with money and expensive gifts. His efforts to turn Lan Yu's love for him into a dependent, loveless relationship failed until Lan Yu discovered Chen in the middle of the seduction of a young college athlete. Crushed, Lan Yu left Chen's apartment. They would not meet again until 4 June 1989, when Chen went looking for Lan Yu, fearing for the youth's safety amid the army's Tiananmen Square crackdown. Finding Lan Yu dishevelled and distraught, the incident reunited the two and opened a new chapter in their relationship. Although Chen Handong still could not commit totally to Lan Yu, he now gave the youth time and attention as well as money, a car, and an expensive villa in the Beijing suburbs. None of the material things were what Lan Yu really wanted although he now accepted them. Chen now lived, somewhat surreptitiously, with Lan Yu and that was all that mattered to the latter. Unfortunately, Chen Handong, being the only son of a top government bureaucrat, was under increasing pressure to marry. After a whirlwind courtship, Chen Handong married Jingping (Su Jin), a translator who helped him negotiate a successful business deal with the Russians. Upon this marriage, Lan Yu moved out of the villa (although it was in his name and legally his) and Chen Handong and he lost all contact. Shortly thereafter, Chen Handong and Jingping divorced. A chance meeting at the airport and Lan Yu's invitation to a home-cooked meal reunited the pair. Finally, Chen Handong reciprocated the love and commitment Lan Yu had so freely given and the two were truly a couple. But, Chen Handong's company, perhaps because of the Russian deal, had aroused government suspicion. An investigation of charges of smuggling and money-laundering started. With his father dead and no longer able to protect him, Chen Handong faced a long prison term, if not execution. Lan Yu took his savings and the proceeds of the sale of his villa and all of Chen's other gifts and raised enough funds to get Chen Handong out of legal and financial trouble. Unfortunately, just as he realised that the younger man was truly his beloved and his destiny, Lan Yu is killed in a traffic accident. Three years later, Chen Handong is still grief-stricken and that is how the film begins with his thinking back on the past and what might have been.