reluctant love
by Douglas Messerli
Leon LeMinh and Ngoc Nguyen (screenplay),
Leon Lê (director) Song Lang / 2018
One of the best films and true gay tear-jerkers I have seen in a long while, is Vietnamese director Leon Lê’s wonderful gangster romance nonetheless seems to play out what Vito Russo argued long ago, is too often played out in queer cinema: at least one of the gay figures must die before the blackout.
Moreover, as in too many queer films, we’re not even sure that the hero of this work, Dung, nick-named “Thunderbolt” (Lien Binh Phat) for his violent actions, is actually gay or whether he might even be described as the true “hero” of this film.
One
of the most remarkable scenes involving Dung’s collection methods is when he
arrives at a home where the parents have not yet returned from work. The two
children, girls, who remain home alone invite the visitor in and offer him tea
and fruits, perhaps some of the few foods they can afford, while waiting for
the return of the parents.
Dung is a polite, perhaps even what we might describe as likeable guest;
yet the moment the parents return he demands the family’s payment, ending with both
mother and father sprawled out on the floor with the young girls hovering in fear
in the back room. By the time he returns to the home the next day to collect
the money, both parents have consumed rat poison and are hospitalized, the wife
dying, while the recovered husband sits in the waiting room, spotting Dung who
seems to have followed him even there. Dung hurries away without confronting the
husband, but the terror he has created has already destroyed their and their
children’s lives.
Meanwhile, at the center of this film is a Vietnamese opera company that
performs in the tradition of cải lương, Vietnamese folk operas, similar
is some aspects but actually quite different and more free-flowing than Chinese
traditional opera. The company has just come back from performing in the
provinces, were the dying art did not apparently attract large audiences, and
the supporter of the company has taken out loans to be able to bring it back to
Ho Chi Minh City where she hopes to recoup her money and pay off the company’s
loans.
The story of this opera,
which is conveyed to the film’s audience through several long operatic
sequences—which also turn this film into a musical opera—is basically about two
young lovers who declare their ever-lasting commitment to each other, only to
be forced by their waring emperor fathers to betray that commitment as they
enter into conflict with one other’s communities. My Chau’s father, who later
discovers, that his own daughter has betrayed his whereabouts my leaving behind
swan feathers that she wears as her cloak for her lover to find her and release
her from her duty, is summarily murdered by her own father, whose body Trong
Thuy discovers and holds in despair at opera’s end.
We do not know of the opera’s plot, however, as Dung enters the theater
during rehearsals, threatening the actors and pouring gasoline on the costumes,
ready to light them on fire until the beautiful Linh Phung arrives, threatening
Dung for his actions, and, after discovering the cause of the event, offers him
his watch and necklace as pre-payment for the box-office receipts their expect
that very night. Dung, strangely, backs off, returning the jewelry to Linh
Phung, while promising to return for the payment.
Director Lê has already hinted in a series of flashbacks that Dung has
himself a great involvement with the cải lương tradition, rushing each
day after to school to watch from backstage performances in which he own
parents were involved, his mother Hong Dieu (Kieu Trinh) performing as the female
lead and his father playing the đàn nguyệt, the Vietnamese “moon lute”
and manipulating with his foot the song lang, the “tap box” which
provides the rhythmic order of the melodically, almost wandering arias of
Vietnamese operatic songs. Hence, we have to assume, his abandonment of the
destruction of company, and his attendance that night at the opera itself. He
pays full price, separating as he always does, his work from his own needs and
pleasures.
This already alerts us to everything
that follows. And we quickly realize that something has awakened in his
encounter with Linh Phung in Dung’s cold heart. After the concert, he once more
encounters Linh Phung who with the evening’s receipts quickly pays off their
debt. But the loan, taken out by the opera’s supporter, represents something
else in both these men’s lives.
Bowing up from the celebratory dinner to
which he is invited, Linh Phung eats in a local pub, where even there,
recognizing his fame as an artist, the owner’s offer him a large dish of dessert
fruit for free as an expression of their appreciation. Four or five, half drunken
male diners, the bullies of all queer dramas, notice the restaurant’s offer and
begin to attempt to intimidate the actor, suggesting he join them in a drink.
Linh Phung has already had two beers,
and being almost a teetotaler, politely bows out. But they will not let up,
leading to what always evolves into a challenge and then a fight. Sitting in
the same café is Dung, however, who intrudes on the battle royal, beating up
the offenders, and bringing back the beaten, passed-out singer to his modest
apartment.
Linh Phung awakens too late to even attend his performance; the opera
has already ended with
Yet he is forced to return since his special necklace with the key to
his apartment is missing, and it is far too late to call a locksmith. Now,
suddenly, in a quiet series of the two men’s questions about one another, we
sense of romance brewing about which neither of them have the slightest
recognition. It begins with Linh Phung discovering in Dung’s apartment one of
his favorite childhood books about the exploits of a lost elephant, a shared
moment that startles him; why does such an insensitive gangster have his
favorite book, with passages underlined?
But even more remarkably, he discovers a small musical score within its
pages, which he pulls out. Their questions about one another’s lives also imbue
these scenes with a sense of confession and immediate recognition of pain and connection.
When asked about his parents, Linh Phung admits that they, having been part of
the cải lương community, might have indeed been proud of him; but on
opening night as they traveled to see his performance, they were both killed in
an accident. He is a kind of orphan, just as we soon discover Dung is as well.
Dung asks his to perform the piece of music he has discovered in the child’s
book. But Linh Phung argues he cannot really perform without music, at which
point Dung, in a complete surprise, pulls out his father’s đàn nguyệt and
his song lang and plays quite competently while Linh Phung sings the
song of his mother’s departure, apparently to remain with the company against
her husband’s desires. He immediately recognizes that a great part of Dung’s
anger still has to do with his mother’s abandonment.
Impressed with Dung’s musical talents, he also suggests that he should
audition of become the
đàn nguyệt player in their company. But at that very moment the lights
in his apartment go out, and the two are forced back into the streets for a
lovely encounter in a restaurant and then on the dark roof of Dung’s building
with the moon hanging romantically over them.
Nothing romantic is openly expressed, but from the burning looks at one
another, the sense of a shared past, and both their frustrations and desires for
real love anyone but an inattentive viewer perceives that the two men are
falling in love, forget the sloppy homosexuality of it. This is, we now
recognize, a queer musical romance.
These men don’t kiss, don’t have sex, and never share the same bed. But
we now know they’re destined for one another in the way that any of Hong King
director Wong Kar-Wai’s characters are, the director whom Lê declared was his
major influence.
Interestingly enough, when Lê first pitched this film to director
Vernoica Ngo from Studio 68, she demanded that the two major characters, Dung
and Linh Phung should have more on screen physical contact, but Lê absolutely
refused.
There is something to be said about the
romantic impossibility of these two characters, now truly in love with one
another, particularly evidenced in Linh Phung’s purchase of a gift of a chain
with an elephant (symbol of their shared childhood book) upon it for his new
friend, Dung. The distance is that of Tristan and Isolde, of My Chau and Trong
Thuy.
Yet I can only sympathize with the views
of sympathetic reviewer Natalie Ng writing for Filmed | in | Ether:
“Perhaps I am projecting—projecting
the need for less tragic, unfulfilled stories of queer romance. Perhaps I am
also increasingly dissatisfied after years of reading and watching content
featuring queer-coded characters or relationships that are never canonical or
made explicit. Director Leon Lê stated that, “with Song Lang, I wanted to make
a film where the leading characters didn’t have any physical contact so maybe
the audience can simply view them as people.” But why? Queer people should be
viewed as people no matter how they are. As someone who is all too fond of a
period romance, where a simple touch of an ungloved hand is so sexually
charged, I understand deeply the power of restraint in depicting intimacy
between people on screen. But I also don’t believe in taking away physical
intimacy just to stay away from ‘stereotypes’ of the genre, which director Le
also gave as a reason regarding the lack of physical contact between his
characters. And in discussing stereotypes of LGBTQ cinema, isn’t ‘Bury Your
Gays’ a more harmful stereotype? Personally, I think it’s healthier to
challenge a heterosexual, cis white audience, instead of having to make queer
Asian-ness palatable by sanitising it.”
Ng suggests that the ending is rushed, but there I disagree, as we see,
quite in full the final version and performance of the opera starring Linh
Phung and the actress playing My Chau. For years, Linh’s mentor has been telling
him that as talented of an actor as he is, unlike his cohort, he is still
acting instead of feeling the character. But suddenly, even Thuy Van notices
something has changed. As he invokes his love for My Chau, his horror of
finding her dead body, real tears flowing down his cheeks at the very moment
when outside the theater, after visiting Auntie Nga, to quit his job, and now
with his mute in hand, he waits to enter the theater to try-out for the underpaid
role his father once performed. Looking up at the posters in a vision of hope
for a different kind of future that traces and shadows his past, now with
possibly his own version of My Chau in the male Linh Phung is his heart, Dung
is suddenly stabbed in the back by the surviving husband of the woman who has
died of rat poison—his past suddenly come with a vengeance to put an end to new
love, dreams, and change of heart.
When I can, I always read the full story of the films I am watching.
Unlike most viewers, I want to know the basic lines of plot so that I can focus
on images, the acting, and the other cinematic devices of the film without
worrying about where they are taking me. But this time, so moved by Dung’s possible
redemption and new love, I forget the story, stunned and startled by the sudden
murder of our hero. I too felt betrayed, shocked as the opera audiences must
have been when My Chau’s father suddenly takes up the sword to slay his own daughter.
Already in tears over the romantic meet-up of these two intertwined men,
I literally broke down in sobs when reality struck. This is not a comic opera,
but like the cải lương work being performed on stage at that very
moment, is a highly melodramatic tale of fate.
Like
all of the startlingly beautiful images throughout this film, the last few
frames of this movie are unforgettable testimonies to the lovely dreams and
simultaneous nightmares cinema creates as the blood from Dung’s death wound as
he falls to his death splendiferously swirls around his body in dark ruby red rivulets.
Within moments he is quietly taken away by an ambulance before Linh Phung passionately
sings out his last lines of love and horror before the opera comes to an end. For
the first time, he has now played his role with the passion of love that was
missing
The rain of the humid Vietnamese city has washed away the blood before
he walks away from the theater feeling without knowing that the true love of his
life has disappeared, he left alone to mourn his emptiness in the nightly
performances.
Yes, it would have been so amazing had these two lost, reluctant figures
finally found themselves in one another’s arms; but life doesn’t always offer
up the dreams we conjure up for ourselves, more often leaving us with dreary
reality of having to express our emotions, at the very best, in art.
So many critics missed the point that I became angry in reading their
reviews suggesting the two men had developed a mentorship, friendship, or relationships
that represented their missing loved ones, that I wanted to scream. These two
men clearly parallel the characters of the opera, pulled away from one another’s
arms by other’s limited imaginations, their demands for money, battle, and hate
instead of love. Anyone who cannot easily read Lê’s film for what it expresses,
perhaps will never be able to comprehend or perform the necessary role of the loving
each of us is challenged to enact in our daily lives.
And we don’t need breathless scenes of bedroom lovemaking to explain
that to us.
This is yet another film that helps me to understand what film critic
Pauline Kael really meant in her collection titled I Lost It at the Movies.
Los Angeles, April 23, 2026
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(April 2026).
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