Bel Ami by Jun Geng: A Luminous and Political Queer Film

Broadcast ban in China, Bel ami, in theatres this Wednesday, January 28, interweaves the trajectory of a lesbian couple and a melancholic middle-aged gay man in a city encased by the regime. Jun Geng signs a bittersweet comedy where loving becomes, in itself, a political act.

Presented last autumn at the latest edition of the Chéries-Chéris festival, drew our attention as much for the delicacy of its gaze as for its censorship in China – the authorities deeming its statements “subversive”. Shot in stylized black and white, in a small town in the northeast, this dramatic comedy unfolds a choral narrative where intimate trajectories cross in the oppressive shadow of the regime. Jun Geng (who previously directed Manchurian Tiger in 2021 and Free and Easy in 2017) scrutinizes here the disillusionment of characters who seek to love freely in a country that denies them this possibility.

Although the title evokes Maupassant’s literary classic, Bel ami is no adaptation and resembles more the contemporary painting of thwarted feelings. At the heart of this minimalist tableau, Mr. Qu Wenshan, a man in his fifties, traverses a period of disarray after breaking up with his partner. Married once in his youth, he now tries to fully own his desires despite the loneliness and guilt that this late emancipation brings to light. In parallel, Liu Ying and Abu, a lesbian couple, seek to conceive a child. Lacking legal recognition and under familial pressure, they consider an arrangement with the neighborhood gay hairdresser who could serve them both as a donor and as a social cover.

With this sixth feature, the Chinese filmmaker interlaces the misadventures of these characters who respond to one another and contradict themselves, revealing in the subtext a common struggle, that of reconciling their feelings within a rigid framework. But behind its narrow aesthetic and its hypnotic pace, Bel ami frequently goes off course, creating turning points toward the absurd or even burlesque. Jun Geng malicously distorts the codes imposed by the communist regime, going so far as to have one of the characters hum “The Internationale” in a sequence as incongruous as it is irreverent.

Love is not rational

The emotional density of Bel ami lies less in its dialogue than in its silences, in the averted looks and in the multiple games of reflections in the mirrors. The sound texture, pared down to its essentials, heightens the isolation of the characters as if they were enclosed in a bubble outside of time. Engaging the same troupe of actors, notably Xu Gang and Zhang Zhiyong who alternate filming with their daily jobs, Jun Geng surrounds his film with a rare cohesion that radiates a troubling sense of familiarity. Behind its discreet humor and its assumed melancholy, Bel Ami asserts with force that “love is not rational” and that it is precisely this irrationality that makes it subversive. By observing the daily life of its protagonists, without misery, nor grand speeches, Jun Geng delivers a luminous film that is resolutely political in its freedom of tone.

Credits photo : Blue Note Films