Yu-Tong Weng | 宵禁 (Undercurrent) / 2020

love in a crisis

by Douglas Messerli

 

Yu-Tong Weng (screenwriter and director) 宵禁 (Undercurrent) / 2020 [20 minutes]

 

In Taiwan movie-maker’s 2020 film Undercurrent, which contains no dialogue, we are sent back in time to the winter of 1979, with the city was under curfew due to the anti-governmental protesters involved in the “Formosa Incident,” during the pro-democracy demonstrations that occurred in Kaohsiung.

    In this wordless drama we have no idea why the young teenager (Lee-Fong Huang) is still out wandering in the late night, although we might suspect that, despite a current girlfriend, he might be seeking out the sex that several others seem to be exploring in the local park, its public toilet, and nearby derelict hut into which he follows a handsome young youth (Lee-Fong Huang). Nothing sexual goes on between the teen and the youth except a gift of a cigarette and the great many languorous looks they exchange. Eventually the youth moves out of the enclosure into the park where we can see a number of other men also wandering.

      The official film description ponders whether these men, living under martial law, are “constantly escaping from their government, the society, or the affection buried in their hearts,” but any gay man can tell you outright, these are not political revolutionaries but perhaps equally troublesome men who are protesting the silencing of their hearts.

     Being gay in such a culture is perhaps just as dangerous as having political views, but even the policeman (Ming-fan Wu), when he finally arrives, is not interested in the older queers, including the handsome youth, but is perfectly ready to take the teenager into custody, whom he soon attempts to rape in his car.

       The boy puts up a good fight, and is finally tossed out into the now rainy streets, bruised and psychologically broken by the event.

        He attempts to move back toward the only safety he as found in the park toilet, but has no longer any energy. The youth reappears and helps him back to their refuge. When he attempts to undress the totally wet youth, the boy pulls away, the youth simply sitting beside him while the exhausted teen finally lays his head upon this lap, the older boy gifting him another cigarette and gently stroking his head.

       The government is something to be feared in every way possible, while the society outsiders, it appears, can mostly be trusted to offer up love for those like them who are lost and have no way to find their way back home into a society that provides them with few opportunities to be themselves.

        This is a lovely, mostly quiet movie that uses nature and the natural pull of love to great effect while opposing it to the intense lights shined into faces and the brutal assaults of the so-called normalized regime of hate.

 

Los Angeles, December 26, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2024).