East Palace, West Palace
Sun
12
Sun 12 Nov 1:15 PM
Cinema Nova - Cinema 10
Wheelchair
Allocated Seating
94 Mins | China
Cheekily borrowing its English-language title from two public toilets in Beijing that sit on either side of the Forbidden City and are infamous beats, this daring, erotically charged and emotionally nuanced film from director Zhang Yuan was the first from mainland China to address homosexuality explicitly. Indeed, the director’s cut was smuggled out of town and on to France for post-production lest it raise hackles at home. Adapted from the short story by Xiaobo Wang, it features Si Han as a young man so enamoured with a cop (Jun Hu) who busts him after dark one night that he basically engineers getting arrested. What follows is an almost noir-like, at times sadomasochistic, interrogation during which the power balance is in constant flux. Just who is the cat here and who is the mouse?
“ZHANG MINGLES POWERFUL DRAMA AND COURAGEOUS POLITICS.” - LAWRENCE VAN GELDER, THE NEW YORK TIMES
“ZHANG MINGLES POWERFUL DRAMA AND COURAGEOUS POLITICS.” - LAWRENCE VAN GELDER, THE NEW YORK TIMES