The movie Lan Yu discusses about the hardships LGBT people face in China (although the movie itself revolved around a gay couple. One thing I realized is that whenever a movie is set on supporting the LGBT community, they generally will revolve around a gay couple; Rarely have I seen movies going on about Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transexuals).

The movie begins in a bar, where a business guy was helping out another business guy to find him a boyfriend. Ultimately, the business guy suggested the other business guy to go out with Lan Yu. Lan Yu himself is also a gay person. One thing I was particularly surprised with was when the gay business man ended up marrying a woman. That, I wasn’t surprised about; It was necessary for him to do so in order to remove suspicions that he was a gay person. However, after he divorced with the woman, he not only was depressed, but also he said that he thought he was a man who could make a woman happy. This made me wondering, even though the film directors portrayed the business guy as a gay man, could he also have been interested in woman?

Originally, it was the business man who was tugging the strings in the relationship. This could be seen in numerous occasions in the film. The first instance was when Lan Yu caught the business man cheating. Even though, Lan Yu was upset about this, he has forgiven the business man after he went to save Lan Yu from the “incident.” Another instance was when the business man gave him a house, and promised they would be together, but then ended up marrying the woman. I think it was when the business man married the woman when the relationship between the two began to change. It was instead Lan Yu who began to have control over the relationship.  

Later, when the business man was in deep trouble with the officials, Lan Yu saved the business man by paying the officials $3 million in an attempt to bribe the officials from enprisoning the business man.

In addition to attempting to show the difficulties gay men encounter in China, I think it was also to show that they not only have to capability to be in a lasting, (somewhat) loyal relationship, but also have to capacity to be in a happy relationship just like a straight couple could have.