Liang Hu | Listen / 2012

the lives of others

by Douglas Messerli

 

Liang Hu (screenwriter and director) Listen / 2012 [9 minutes]

 

If you’ve ever wondered what all those Chinese bureaucratic spies listening in to their fellow citizens’ phone calls might hear in their daily duties, British, Brighton-based director Liang Hu conjures up his own possibilities in his short film that in many respects might remind one of a shortened version of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s 2006 film The Lives of Others.

     Although the film’s central character Xiaobo (Bruce Chong) is asked to listen in to several mundane conversations, he is most intrigued by an ongoing series of phone chats between a son and his mother about his recent revelation that he is a gay man. The mother goes through the typical catalogue of fears and terrors, that she is somehow personally responsible, that it will destroy her son, that he is willfully choosing to oppose her, and that is the fault of numerous social problems having to do with computers, media, and the sexual lewdness of contemporary culture, all influences upon him particularly after his decision to move from their small village to a large urban area.

     One by one, the son quietly attempts to clarify her misconceptions, to make it clear to her that it is no sin nor immense difficulty in today’s world to be gay, and to finally reassure her that government agents listening in certainly have more important issues on their mind than the interchange between a gay man and his suffering mother.

     And ultimately, like so many confrontations such as this one around the world, it boils down to the selfish dilemmas of what she might say to his relatives, the two aunts who have just visited, etc. If the family ever found out, she proclaims, she would have to jump off a bridge in shame. He suggests that she simply tell them what she has always told them in the past; but having the knowledge she now has, she can conceive of no solution to the societal shaming.

      In the final call, we hear him attempting to make a date for when her two “sons” might visit her, she cutting him off with frightening coldness by declaring, “he is not my son,” presumably meaning her own son’s lover.

      If the Chinese telephone voyeurs have bigger issues on their minds, it seems not to be true for Xiaobo, who listens both on and off the job with close attention. At one point we wonder whether, in fact, he may be creating a dossier about the errant son which will lead to public shaming or even arrest. But gradually we come to suspect—particularly when we read the look of disappointment upon his face when one of his calls is interrupted by a fire drill—that he has more personal reasons for his fascination with the interchange between son and mother.

      Hu suddenly moves his very last scene out-of-doors where we watch someone walk slowly up a street, checking out the addresses, before finally selecting a building and ringing its bell. It is the visitor’s (Xiaobo) father, who he has apparently, as he explains, not been able to see for a long while, his father responding, “You had your reasons. I understand.”

      The visitor asks if he still with Uncle Sun (the word “uncle” being used here as it often is in such cases to mean a family friend, or a relationship that can be explained only by a vague relational term.) Yes, he is still with him, and he is busy cooking the meal; he’ll be happy to see you, suggests the father as the young man enters and the door is closed behind him.

      Clearly, Xiaobo’s own father is a gay man who left the family long ago for “Uncle” Sun. But only now, after hearing the painful conversation about gay life between an unaccepting mother, a kind a bully who cannot be reasoned with, has Xiaobo chosen to finally take a stand, to reunite with his father and rectify the seemingly unforgiving situation that has forced the long separation, presumably centered upon his own mother’s inability to accept the truth. Despite his terrible occupation, Xiaobo has in his own way finally spoken out for the freedom of individual expression and sexuality. The lives of others have revealed truths about himself.

      This film, originally shot, one presumes, in the Chinese dialect whose characters appear as subtitles, has been dubbed by English actors, which I have to admit, I found somewhat offensive. It’s difficult to listen to Chinese characters speaking in Brighton dialects. But I presume the director felt he had to do this in order to attract his target audience. I may be alone is having preferred the characters have the spoken Chinese with English subtitles.

 

Los Angeles, December 12, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2022).