This Vietnamese show isn't exactly groundbreaking, but it definitely keeps you hooked. It’s a quick watch with 10 episodes that only last about 15 to 20 minutes each, and even though it uses all the usual BL tropes, it really works because you can't help but root for the underdog. The romance actually takes its time to show up and then wraps up pretty fast, but the characters still feel way more relatable than in a lot of other shows like this. The story follows Phuc, who moves from Hanoi to Saigon to open his dream bar and live with his girlfriend. Things go sideways immediately when he arrives a day early to surprise her and catches her cheating, so he breaks up with her and leaves. He ends up reaching out to his old childhood neighbors, Cong and his sister Han, who he hasn't seen in years. The siblings are struggling on their own with a massive debt and Han’s poor health. Han thinks her brother works at a convenience store, but Cong is actually a heavy for a criminal gro...
Mario Mieli was born in 1952 to a rich upper class family. He was obviously gay and no one besides his mother ever tried to keep a cordial relationship with him. He loved to cross dress and regardless of the family's hostility, Mieli lacked for neither money or material possessions. When he went to London, he took active part in London Gay Liberation Front and back home in Italy, he was also responsible for the first homosexual demonstration at a Congress. Even though he was the founder of Italy's first major gay-rights group in 1972, he left it 2 years later since he thought the gay movement should remain independent of political parties. We see him meeting innumerable suitors and many times equating gay rights to women rights. His fiercely bright intellect empowered his contributions to the gay rights movement but his personal life was a mess. He found love many times and eventually with Umberto but his bipolar intensity drove him away too.
Mario killed himself in 1983, before turning 31. He was an activist, a writer and a performer and a key figure in the Italian cultural panorama at that time along with his friends. He was a communist and also an intellectual who was as interested in the philosophy of change as in the reality of achieving it. He liked to provoke and to innovate but either he always went over board or was always not understood and it is this behavior of his over a period of time that drove more and more people away from him. I wonder, if Italians would find more connect with the story and the history which is paramount to the gay freedom and liberation that our generation is enjoying today. The performances by everyone in the film is almost pitch perfect, although its a first where I think the real person was much better and good looking that the reel equivalent.
This is an intriguing account of a slice of LGBTQ history that not many of us know about, and it is always rewarding to discover queer pioneers to whom we should feel indebted. I may have not connected with the topic personally but it doesn't take away from the fact that these important stories need to be told, so we don't take things for granted. (5/10)
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