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Tell The World I Love You (Thai)

By Golu
This Thai film is going for that crime and romance mix inside the BL space, trying to blend coming of age struggles with gritty gang violence thrown in. Honestly, this movie really didn't need to exist. It grabs actors straight out of BL shows that you'll recognize instantly, then tries to drop them into this gritty setting with a story that just doesn't land. Even if there was some kind of heart buried in here somewhere, the way it's actually put together feels pretty amateur. Kheng comes from a rough background and has his heart set on studying in China, so he's grinding hard trying to land a scholarship. We don't get much of his backstory, but he's living with his friend Tai, who I'm pretty sure has feelings for him too, and Tai backs him up in every way he can. One day Kheng witnesses a group of thugs beating up a guy named Boang, who turns out to be a drug dealer, though Kheng has no clue about that at the time. He ends up saving Boang's life an...
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My Dear (Chinese/English/Hungarian) (Documentary)

By Golu
My Dear is a self-reflective documentary about the will of a young Chinese director Yao to express his own sexual identity in Europe. Shifting between observational footage, paper puppetry, and poetic symbolism, he explores expressions of sexual identity in this essay about queerness, immigration, and performance. (A question I have is, since Yao was living in Budapest, why is the country of origin shown as Portugal?)

Yao, a Chinese national, is nearing the end of his two year European college education.  Yet the 26-year-old is reluctant to return to China because he is already being pressured by his parents to come back home, get married and have kids. This closeted gay man has been in a relationship with Asim, a gay Iranian living in China for almost 6 years now, but no one in China knows this. He thought that coming to Europe would liberate him but now that he is finishing studies and finding a job is becoming increasingly hard, choices for him are minimal. He realizes that maybe one performance as a drag artist will make him feel free and liberate him before he may have to eventually move back to China. 

With just an hour duration, thankfully it was not too long but it just felt incomplete. Most of us have our own coming out stories but there has to be something very compelling and unique to make a film out of it, something that people would wanna watch. Is being together with the one you love worth abandoning the culture that defines who you are?  Is swallowing the dictates of the culture you were brought up in worth betraying and repressing your true nature?  This film offers no resolution of these questions. Yes, using puppetry and imagery to show us the conversations with his family is unique, but the story overall holds no attention. Why is Yao interested in drag? What is the boyfriend's back story? I would have liked to see some of that. Also the ending felt rather abrupt. The whole build up towards Yao trying to find a mentor to perform should have ideally culminated with the actual performance. But we never get to see that. I mean we don't even get to know what really happens to him or his boyfriend. The title of this documentary comes form the song that Yao is preparing to perform on, but honestly overall this documentary is something which doesn't really offer anything new or unique and I wouldn't consider it an essential viewing. (4/10)
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