"Dear Tenant": After the liberation of self-restraint, how can gay-themed movies still be possible?

The background of "Dear Tenant" is set in Keelung in 2011. After the death of his partner Wang Liwei (Yao Chunyao), a piano teacher, Lin Jianyi (played by Mo Ziyi) stayed at the beginning to help his partner solve the financial difficulties at home, and rented the house. The top floor is covered and takes care of Wang Liwei's diabetic mother Zhou Xiuyu (Chen Shufang) and his nine-year-old son Wang Youyu (Bai Runyin). However, after Zhou's death, Lin was accused by Xiaoyu's uncle Wang Ligang (played by Yuan Jie) of murdering Zhou Xiuyu and intentionally embezzling the property by adopting Youyu.

If Yang Yazhe (who happens to be the producer of "Kin") in "Blood Guanyin" (2017) is dealing with the lovelessness of blood-related families, what Zheng Youjie described in "Dear Tenant" is probably the opposite of the former. , that is, how can adults and children who are not related by blood get married because of love? As questioned by the prosecutor in the film, generally speaking, the tenant does not bear the daily living and economic expenses of the landlord's family, but Jianyi went to the Wang's house to cook during the Chinese New Year, and every time Zhou Xiuyu shouted in the middle of the night because of the wound on his leg. When he was in pain, he got up and cared, accompanied him to the hospital for a return visit, took Xiaoyu to school every day, and even when his residence was searched, he was not worried about the impending calamity, but that Xiaoyu was going to take a test at school that day. Can he send Xiaoyu to school first.

Just these, is it enough to verify that Lin Jianyi is "family"? The prosecutors can't see it, but the audience can see that even though Jian's contribution to the Wang family has already surpassed the relationship between the tenant and the landlord, other details are proving that, for Mama, Lin Jianyi is still an indescribable identity. outsider. During the Chinese New Year, I cooked rice, but I couldn’t eat it together, and I couldn’t hold incense to worship my ancestors like other people present. I could only stand silently and put my hands together. When she was helping to change the dressing, she had to be reminded again that her son Liwei was killed by herself.

Zhou Xiuyu's sentence "Is my son happy with you?" is often regarded as the moment when Lin Jianyi is officially recognized as a family member, but it should also be noted that Zhou Xiuyu's sentence to Lin in the previous paragraph may be As for Kenichi, there are some sudden "go to the court to ask how to adopt". Zhou Xiuyu's attitude towards this "unusual tenant" represents that even though Lin Jianyi is not related by blood and law, and may even kill his own son, he still passes through those who have been honed in life. Gradually, she is recognized by the grandmother as someone who can be entrusted to her grandson, so it can be regarded as an important transition between the two recognitions of outsiders and family members.

Compared with the adults, because of his awkward status as a comrade, and his entanglement with Li Weishan's sad past, it is difficult to embrace Kenichi's existence in life. The nine-year-old boy Youyu has retained a more innocent reaction. Although this innocence is preserved, it is hard to deny that there is no so-called protection or concealment from the adults around him. However, during the Chinese New Year, because Kenichi couldn't eat at the table, he took out the meal and gave him these details, showing that he had a relationship with the elders in the family. In contrast, Xiaoyu accepted Kenichi without any problems and gave a more positive response.

These trusts accumulated in daily life may also explain why Youyu is angry that Jianyi concealed things, but without the previous accumulation, Xiaoyu would not have run out of the tent to hug Jianyi and not let the police take him away when Jianyi was arrested. The paragraphs of , can be established emotionally, and it will not make Kenichi's letter shouting to Xiaoyu effective in the workbook. This may have nothing to do with why his biological father left, or the huge proposition of how comrades are viewed in society, just because in his life, Kenichi is indeed the one who takes care of him, even if it is difficult to replace blood, he has memories His father, who is also very important (will teach him to play the piano and mathematics, it is no wonder that he is asked to sign the contact book) "Put the number two".

When I first saw this film shortly after its release, apart from being impressed by the way of depositing a family through the details of life, which is reminiscent of Hirokazu Kore-eda's "The Thief Family" (2018), one of the questions I left behind was one of the personal questions. , is "Why is the mountain?" At first, I was quite puzzled by this point, thinking that this film is a bit uphill for the sake of going up the mountain. However, after entering the scene for the second time recently, my current tentative conclusion about my previous doubts is that compared with indoor spaces such as courts, police stations, and Wang's residences, and compared with Keelung, where the scene is relatively urban, the mountains in the plot may have loosened the aforementioned. In space, the scenes appear continuously due to non-linear editing, resulting in a sense of oppression; secondly, the whole film begins with an aerial shot of the vast mountain scenery, and the next scene immediately turns to Mo Ziyi in the courtroom, with a gloomy and dark tone. Approaching the close-up of the actor's face, in addition to the comparison, it also throws out seemingly unrelated scenes first, and gives the film a more suspenseful function before various accusations appear.

If I go back to the text of the film to explain why it is a mountain, I personally think that Lin Jianyi and Wang Liwei already live in Keelung, which is close to the sea. The common love of mountaineering, one can be the release of the two people from the ocean and the urban market that they are all familiar with, the other is the independence and magic of the mountains and forests, and the comradeship relationship that is being spied everywhere. Not enough of a relief from a friendly society.

This film also provides another imagination of gay-themed films. Although Taiwanese films have already written about gays, and there are also some well-known works, but under the external reality such as the law, when the society has not yet given the possibility of imagining gays other than romantic relationships, gays in films are often not on the issue. Under the packaging, it is highly spectacled, that is, in a vigorous love relationship that is obviously outside the real world, it ends under the oppression of the external environment.

And in 2011, set in the background of "Pro"—or 2017, when the film was named "Restriction" and received a feature film tutoring grant—at both points in time, Taiwan has not yet ushered in gay marriage legally. legalization. At a time when the movement has not yet come to an end and the future long awaited by the gay community has not yet arrived, director Zheng Youjie, who is also the screenwriter of this film, proposes the imagination of how to interact with society when gays enter the family through this film. Although it is not stated in the film (when the Wang family is still difficult to recognize Lin Jianyi's status, it is probably impossible to say it through the character's mouth), but the physical male character Lin Jianyi is shaped and placed in a similar manner in terms of behavior and image. It is usually a woman's "daughter-in-law" position, which makes the film go beyond gay men and cover the discussion of gender stereotypes lightly.

From the perspective of the director’s own creative context, the above points are once again corresponding to his previous works, focusing on social issues; in the context of gay-themed films, the point of “returning the sense of life to gays”, Even though "Dear Tenant" was released in 2020 after the legalization of gay marriage, the issues raised in it are still quite forward-looking, and it further reminds the inadequacies of Taiwanese films about gay writing. And now that same-sex marriage is legalized, it is even more so, where do we need to go.