Lan Yu is a love story. There's a fairytale quality to the events, but as Lan Yu concerns two men, that might not be the best way to state matters.

Chen Handong (Hu Jun) is a successful, older businessman in Beijing in the late '80s. He has a thriving business. One night, he encounters a beautiful kid named Lan Yu (Liu Ye), an architecture student from the country who is not above a bit of prostitution to earn extra money.

Handong takes the young man away with him that evening, and a relationship of sorts develops between them. But where Lan Yu is comfortable with the emotional aspect of their union, Handong is not. In fact, Handong makes it clear from the beginning that the two men will only be together for as long as it feels right. Once they get to know each other too well, says the older man, it will be over.

Nothing -- neither the globally huge events of Tiananmen Square nor the ordinary details of infidelity -- takes the focus in Lan Yu away from the central story of emotional attachment.

Handong even marries, doing the right thing socially in a wedding to a brilliant and beautiful young translator. But then he is divorced. And then his business gets him into serious trouble with the law. Through all of it, Lan Yu's love for Handong is the latter's salvation. Even the material generosity he has shown to Lan Yu -- for the wrong reasons -- comes back to reward Handong. Lan Yu is often witty and the characters playful, but several references to fate maintain an undercurrent of tension and a sense of inevitable tragedy -- hence the fairytale aura of the narrative.

For the simplicity and strength of its emotional core, Lan Yu is an exquisite film. What's different about the movie is its investigation of love and relationships without any special emphasis on gay themes, although the lovers are men. The movie had to be shot on the sly, mind you, homosexuality still being mostly taboo in China.

(This film is rated AA)

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