Hong Kong writer-director Jun Li‘s third film just enjoyed its world premiere in the 75th Berlinale‘s Panorama strand, marking a visually stunning, biographically inspired tale for the filmmaker (read our review of the film). At the festival, Purple Hour spoke with him and lead actor Jayden Cheung about their collaborative approach to the film and senses of isolation and loneliness that permeate—especially in urban spaces, but both within queer experience and outside of it.
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Purple Hour: I’d like to start by looking at the film’s exploration of loneliness and solitude—and perhaps what you talked about through the process with each other.
Jun Li: It’s just my natural state. I think this is the solitude that you have when you create, when you’re a writer. Also in this day and age, being queer, being gay, includes this sort of longing for bodily connection, because these kinds of images are all over, but you don’t always get it. This sort of pornographic image almost surrounds you if you’re a gay man in this day and age. And there is a difference between longing and reality. The main character, like many other gay characters in contemporary films, has this longing for connection and desire for other men. But what we get from this kind of connection when it happens is what this film is about.
Jayden Cheung: I think that it’s not just only for queer people. I think it’s a general feeling of living in this very chaotic world. I genuinely think that’s how the majority of people, maybe especially in Hong Kong, are feeling because of the cultural and political atmosphere.
It kind of speaks to the spectre of casual dating in this day and age, which often leads to very interesting stories. Were you drawing from particular experiences or accounts, either from yourself or other people?
JL: When I was writing, I just drew on my most interesting experiences encountering a person. It also could be general because I wanted to portray a general picture. But also, all of these characters have their uniqueness. I asked the real people [from these encounters], “Can I write about your stories, and how much of your identity can I reveal in the film?” Then, they gave me their answers, and I would ask them if they would be interested in playing themselves in the film. Some of them said yes. That’s why some of them are in the film, and some of them are too shy for the camera, so I would have to do an open casting for that character. In my head it’s like a road movie without a road: you encounter a person, you take something from them, and then you move on. But the impact of that person is felt after you move on through your journey.
Conversations on approaches to intimate scenes are being had in the industry worldwide. What was your approach, working together? The film is mostly made up of long-take static shots, which also adds a specific angle to these scenes.
JL: We did a lot of rehearsals, so most of the actions in the scenes were rehearsed with clothes on. It’s also about what we needed. We would want an intimacy coordinator so there is a balance of control between the director and the actors, for equal power dynamics. So an intimacy coordinator would intervene when there is a scene in action. I, as a director, even when we’re not doing a sexual scene, would ask the actors, how do they feel all the time? With the static shots, we would do the same thing over and over again, 10 or 15 takes. I would keep asking Jayden or the other actor if they are comfortable with doing one more take. I became a director pretty young, my first film was when I was 26 while shooting, so I have always been more like a peer to actors than a superior figure. I have always put the position of the director as very collaborative, and that experience helped me throughout this film.
JC: I think it relates to the size of the crew as well. Maybe in Western productions, there are like 50 or 60 people on set.
JL: 50 or 60 people would be a few!
JC: Right, or maybe even more. The actors feel more pressure on disclosing their bodies to that people. We’re only a 10 or 12 person crew, so we really bonded. I worked with him on his second short film, and I knew a lot of the crew members from that short film as well. So the trust and the bond was so tight that if another person approached me with the same script or different crew members, I might hesitate a little bit more.
We have to talk about the gorgeous black-and-white visuals. Did you talk about staging for this particular setup, or what led you to this approach?
JL: Because I’m red-green colour-blind, this is the least confident part of me. When I’m on set and the set designer or prop master comes and asks me about what kind of colours I want to use onscreen, or the costume designer is choosing between two dresses, things like that make me very uncomfortable because I don’t see what everyone else is seeing. Because this is a very personal film, I wanted to be more expressive. That was my goal. I also feel like male bodies, because we have the nudity of male bodies a lot in the film, looks most gorgeous in black and white. My DoP [Ho Yuk Fai] and I watched a lot of black-and-white films before going on set, and this is both our first time doing black-and-white. […] Also, because we had a very low budget, so a lot of the things you see onscreen are harmonious, but it’s not that harmonious in real life. We didn’t have the budget to buy many things for the set, but I think Prudie, our production designer, has done an incredible job to achieve that kind of aesthetics onscreen.
