I didn't realize until the very end that this film is based on a book of the same name, a true story about Brendan Behan, an Irish writer and political activist, and his time in a British labor camp. It's pitched as a dreamy, romantic film, and it really only comes alive in the last 20 to 25 minutes, where the emotions run high and it tugs at your heart. For the first half I had no clue where the story was headed, though it did start making sense eventually. Brendan is a 16 year old Irish boy who gets caught trying to smuggle a few sticks of dynamite on board, and he's sent off to Borstal, an underage detention center. That's where he meets Charlie, a sailor who's openly gay and also locked up there. Brendan makes it clear he's not gay, but the two still become really close friends. A lot of the film is about what these two get up to along with a few other boys at Borstal, and how Brendan changes during that time. They try to break out of the place, and it costs...
You might need to know a bot of Chinese history around revolution to better appreciate this movie but nevertheless it makes for an interesting viewing. This is an artsy film about a French diplomat falling in love for a Chinese Opera singer. As he pursues his love for the diva he's attracted to, she toys with his foreign ignorance of the cultural differences between their Western & Eastern societies. A French diplomat named Rene Gallimard is living and working in the China at the time of the Vietnam war. He goes to see the famous Chinese opera Madam Butterfly and instantly falls in love with the woman playing the lead roll. They start an Affair but the woman Song Liling is so modest that she won't let Rene see her naked. The affair is short lived. When the Communist Cultural Revolution separates the would-be lovers, the actress Song is sent off to prison and the diplomat is recalled to France where his wife divorces him. Several years later Song shows up again and tricks him into stealing government documents so as she says they can get their child back. The issue for the lovers is how much each knows about the other—and how much each keeps secret from the other. The secret is finally revealed when Song is arrested and he shows up dressed as a man in the court. Thats when it hits Rene, that that his love of last 18 years is actually a man and not a woman.
Although this is said to be inspired by a true story, I still just cannot digest the fact that how can a man not know that the girl he loved for last 18 years was actually a man. Isin't it so hard to believe. I was uncertain throughout what Song's real feelings for Rene were, although their encounter in the back of the prison vehicle seems to indicate that the feelings were sincere. It all led up to a very bizarre ending, in which Gallimard performs the story for fellow prison inmates, dressed as a woman. Performance wise I think the lead actors definitely did a splendid job specially Song in his role of the chinese opera singer. The movie was kind of split in 3 phases and sometimes was very slow.
An average movie. You have to be very patient and then maybe you would be able to appreciate this masterpiece. Somehow I dont think it was my day. (4.5/10)
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