Alternative Love (Mandarin)

I have realized that gay themed films from China, even though far and in between, are made with certain reservations and rush where stories are pretty ordinary and sometimes they are not brought to proper conclusion. The 70 isa minute film has a very ordinary story, something you have seen a zillion times, yet it leaves a lot to be desired.

School's popular boy You Xie is in a steady relationship with his girlfriend. When a new student Chang Jie joins the class, things change. Because of his interest in music, he and the girlfriend end up becoming friends. You Xie pays no attention to him, but one drunk night the two guys get into a one night stand and You Xie decides to do the right thing. He breaks up with his girlfriend and asks Chang Jie to be his boyfriend. The girl friend can't take this insult and will go to any lengths to bring back her love. But every single trick of hers gets exposed and it is increasingly hard for her to break apart the lovers. She then lets You Xie's sick mother know the truth, which leads to her being hospitalized and You Die hating his ex even more. The film ends here with hints of a possible sequel but I don't think it was ever made (Ot at least I am not aware of).

As I mentioned and you can probably see even by the story thatches film is pretty basic. I do see that the movie was probably trying to show how a college student boldly gets into a homosexual relationship in China, where homosexuality is looked down upon, but the movie skips too many important details, which makes the characters seem unreal. Also the editing was pretty bad. Scenes would be randomly thrown here and there and then you will see the sequence leading to the scene. It made no sense. And it kept repeating. Also, the love between the two leads was so random. Just because they had a drunk one night stand, are they really in love? There was no build up of why a supposedly straight guy You Xie fall for another guy without going through a process of events making him fall for him. You can't just overnight decide this. The characters definitely need more depth than the superficial persona we got to see. I can see why the girlfriend would try everything to get her boyfriend back but the kind of tricks she uses were so not cool and I would never be behind those.

I appreciate its efforts in making the movie about a homosexual couple, since China is, as far as I know, generally homophobic. However, the film is far from doing anything good for the LGBTQ+ people of the country. (4/10)

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