Zhang Yuan: East Palace West Palace

East Palace West Palace: Zhang Yuan's multi-layered liberations

(PR China, 1997)

Released internationally in 1998, Zhang Yuan's East Palace, West Palace was billed as the first gay-themed feature film to be produced in The People's Republic of China. The finished film was shown at European film festivals only after being smuggled out of China, and Zhang was unable to work for several years afterwards, though he has since restarted his film career.

The simple assessment of this as a 'gay' film serves an effective marketing purpose, but also diminished the complex allegorical qualities built into the story, and it - in critical assessments made at the time - tended to leave viewers of any orientation somewhat befuddled. Zhang builds a great amount of the story and tension around stereotypes which are first exploited, but then gradually redefined, which serves to present a sense of homosexuality which is literal at first, but slowly evolves into an elaborate and increasingly stylized commentary upon political power and control, and rapid social change, which in this case is generationally defined and occurring in a tightly controlled and politically closed society. This recasting of seemingly simple sexual situations into philosophical musings about the transformations underway in a society midway between the Tianenmen Square massacre and Communism with Capitalist characteristics seemed lost on most audiences, but was certainly not lost on Chinese authorities, which I would bet is the real reason behind East Palace's difficult birth.

The early scenes of the film are set within a large park in Beijing - a location popular (or notorious) as a gay cruising spot after sundown. Local authorities sporadically arrive to harass whatever men they manage to find, generally inflicting minor verbal degradations upon their victims before releasing them. East Palace presents an evening which unfolds differently, in unexpected, probably inevitable and perhaps transformative fashion.

Protagonist A-Lan (actor Si Han) is rounded up with several other suspects, all of whom flee after submitting to the usual moralistic lecture, framed in a programmatic, revolutionary sort of language which might seem increasingly anachronistic in post-Mao China. The lone exception - A-Lan resists, reading the situation as an intrusion upon his personal freedom, and perhaps as an assault upon what he considers to be an essential identity. The police officer who encounters him (Xiao Shi) has no real sense of how to proceed in dealing with an insubordination which is expressed in the language of liberation (a discourse which sounds familiar in its' language, but not in its' choice of subject matter), but is also expressed with a degree of personal detail that would completely undercut the rather scripted roles both men would seem compelled to play out.

Xiao Shi (actor Hu Jun) arrests A-Lan, and leads him to the nearby park headquarters and begins a verbal interrogation of A-Lan. A-Lan swiftly hijacks this potentially threatening scenario, turning the officer's slurs and questions into a highly detailed autobiography, which A-Lan performs as much as he describes, in an hour-plus display of controlled acting which quickly becomes very memorable. Through this, Xiao Shi - the official or institutional center of power and control - is confronted with the expressive eloquence and self-assurance of A-Lan, and in the face of this confidence (borderline arrogance), his simple assumptions about the mechanics of power and authority, and the inevitable formula behind their construction, steadily erode into an eventual state of confusion. A-Lan, of course, realizes and exploits this, without ever stating it clearly.

If Xiao Shi is a stand-in for state authority (degenerated into chaos and corruption), A-Lan represents a very specific and not necessarily sexual sort of liberation: a genarational shift in power, which might be destabilizing to state authority, which may or may not offer personal liberation, which may or may not repudiate the old order of things. A-Lan seems to accept that future promise may only arrive after present-day sacrifice, and not only does he accept this, he's managed to subvert this, in a manner that radiates power. In this, his seemingly submissive status becomes a mere cover for a renegade, revolutionary toughness.

These qualities would perhaps seem anachronistic to western viewers; a reading of The Celluloid Closet would reveal many rather similar Hollywood scenarios, some played out in a highly regressive fashion. Zhang is certainly aware of this, but he's also crafted a film which retools such stock sterotypes with an eye towards present-day Chinese specifics. This noted, East Palace West Palace is not without its' problems - A-Lan is also married and leading a secret life, a life which he is clear in stating as his essential nature. This day-to-day aspect - the hidden, and persecuted side of gay life in non-Western nations is ignored in this film (in favor of a highly theatricalized unreality), and is a subject in need of some exploration. Nonetheless, this is still a gorgeous, fascinating, complex film deserving of a wider audience.