I've always had kind of a love hate relationship with Chinese historical BLs. Some are genuinely excellent, but then there are others that cram in so much plot that keeping track of all the layers of betrayal and scheming gets exhausting, and I end up checking out mentally. Part of the issue is also just how much content is out there in this space, so something really has to stand out to keep me hooked. In this case, the production value is genuinely impressive, top tier stuff, but story wise, I just couldn't bring myself to actually care about these characters. There's a ton of political scheming and backstage manipulation running throughout. Somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, a hostage ends up falling for his own Prince Charming. The show runs eight episodes, each around 50 to 60 minutes long. After spending three years guarding the border, Fifth Prince Yin Qi gets called back to the capital because of a secret letter, only to end up walking straight into a deadly...
Another one of the recent weird films that I have been seeing. This film has absolutely no plot and there are scenes that just go on and on and on for a long time without giving much push to the story. The camera loves the two lead actors to the extent that I simply could not figure out if paternal love was crossing over into incest or just homo-eroticism.Father and the son live alone in a rooftop apartment in their own private world and are very close to each other. The extent of closeness is never fully explained. Following in his father's footsteps, Alexei attends military school. He likes sports, tends to be irresponsible and has problems with his girlfriend. But his girlfriend cannot fathom the closeness between the father and son. Enter another guy who is supposedly the son of the father's old friend. He enters their life and slowly their world starts to change wherein the father is first close to this new boy and then the son become the friend. The film goes on for a while and ends when the new boy is asked to come live with them. Th film ends abruptly as it started.
The lead characters and their male friends spend a lot of time urgently telling each other they need to talk and then staring into space, or down at their shoes, or at each other. Both the lead characters were very good looking but it always left me wondering what the hell was going on. Either the print I had something to do with it but there was no difference between the father's and the son's voice. The dialogue delivery was so monotonous as if it was just a reading of the script. Although the movie and scenes seemed to suggest homo-eroticism, but nothing ever actually happened to reveal this one way or another.
A completely useless film. (1/10)
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