LGBTQ themes are getting more traction in Hong Kong cinema, here comes a double-bill of two recent films, Jun Li’s TRACEY enters into the topical issue of transsexual identity with vim and vigor, whereas Ray Yeung’s TWILIGHT KISS is a more serene, but no less potent drama about coming out the closet in one’s twilight years.
TRACEY, the debut feature of Jun Li, stars Philip Keung as Tung Tai-hung, a 51-year-old family man, who begins to come to terms with his transgender quiddity in the wake of the sudden decease of Ching, his best friend in high school. Tai-hung is a reserved, almost taciturn man, running an optical store, he carefully hides his proclivity of wearing brasserie and lingerie underneath menswear. Recollections of his school days imply that he takes a shine to Ching, and they also meet Brother Darling (Yuen), a former opera singer from mainland China, who confesses to them that “she is a woman living in a man’s body.”
Incentivized by a fortuitous reunion with Brother Darling and spurred by Bong (Huang), the grief-stricken husband of the late Ching, who comes from UK to Hong Kong with Ching’s ashes, Tai-hung’s decades-suppressed urge to become a real woman finally finds a vent in camaraderie and a more inclusive society. Naturally that entails he must brave himself to come out to his wife Anne (Wai), their rebellious son Vincent (Ng) and pregnant daughter Brigitte (Yu), that scene will not be pretty.
It involves a lot of yelling, growling, tears and physical exertion in the two-hander between Tai-hung and Anne’s heated argument, both Keung and Wai gear up to the eleven in their exhausting confrontation, he is in a pink wig and a disheveled dress, incongruously wailing with his masculine, gravelly voice of despair and anguish, while she is a bien-pensant housewife, who has everything to lose if this skeleton in the closet sees the light of day, fighting a losing battle with seething desperation and rancor, for its sheer spectacle of theatricality, TRACEY is worth its salt, including Ben Yuen’s terrific facsimile of an aging trans-woman who finally is granted to have a ball before it is too late.
For all its gritty resolve and showy performers, TRACEY is also hogtied by a first-time director’s greenness, the narrative coherence is too much a challenge for Jun Li to pull through, the whole matter’s emotional arc feels slipshod and slightly confusing, plus Bong’s character is too much a forced interloper whose mission of rote indoctrination is cringeworthy (also compounded by the Cantonese/Mandarin discrepancy), who is also unconvincingly deployed as a love interest to flog to death the fluidity of sexual orientation.
If TRACEY is a patchy, hot-blooded, trans-curious, coming-out melodrama teeming with full-bore confrontation and blunt progressiveness, Ray Yeung’s TWILIGHT’S KISS (its original title Suk Suk means “uncle, uncle”), his third feature, is a far more astute, sagacious exploration of more or less the same topic (closeted elderly men’s coming out to their family), the two leads are Pak (Tai-Bo) and Hoi (Ben Yuen again, completely disposed of any trance of swishy mannerism and seasons his avuncular benevolence with sensible moody concretion varying from expectancy, alacrity to disconsolation).
Pak, a taxi driver already passes the age of retirement, a habitué of a local tearoom, chances upon Hoi, a divorcé and Catholic convert, both have adult children and grandchildren. After consummating their carnal knowledge, they gradually develop feelings for each other, but as a married man, Pak is the one who has a tougher decision to make, whereas for Hoi, audience is explicitly intimated that his son Wan (Lo) has been knowing his secret all the time. While both meditating on a possible future living together as a same-sex couple, that giant leap takes much more than a steely determination and their unalloyed, mutual affection.
As a converse of TRACEY, TWILIGHT’S KISS actually reasons with us that coming-out is not the sole option, such matter should never be labelled as a black or white dichotomy, for people like Pak and Hoi, staying in a grey zone where damage can be maintained in minimal level is a viable alternative, though it is predicated on falsehood, but they are not living in a perfect world, nobody is. For Hoi, his coming-out might take baby steps, if he can let go that sense of shame and guilt (pertinent to the Catholic influence); as for Pak, he might as well never come out, though his wife Ching (Au) seems to be in the know, but at their twilight years, the status quo is the outgrowth of years’ concerted compromise, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
It is really invigorating and discerning of Yeung assuming a spin of diversity into the genderqueer discussion, and he makes a cogent case through both actors’ invested, deeply affecting performances, especially Tai-Bo, a veteran character actor appearing over 130 films, comports himself remarkably well with touching sensibility under Pak’s tough carapace, often in reticent mode, Pak’s contemplation gains weight through his motionless expression.
Yeung deftly portrays the sex sequences with subdued tenderness that normalizes the geriatric sex life that is not often shown on the silver screen, and a sideshow about a proposition of a gay nurse home validates how progressive LGBTQ movement has reached in Hong Kong, which further consolidates the film’s humanistic, exceedingly realistic take on the issue. For Pak and Hoi’s generation, their tragedy has an entrenched root in their specific circumstances, we will be too airy-fairy to expect one drastic move can turn tragedy into comedy in one fell swoop. That is exactly why we should doubly cherish the precious victory of this stage, for the younger generation, a more open-minded, all-inclusive society cannot be taken for granted.
referential entries: Tom Hooper’s THE DANISH GIRL (2015, 6.5/10); Stanley Kwan’s LAN YU (2001, 7.9/10); Ann Hui’s THE WAY WE ARE (2008, 8.6/10).
