While homosexuality is nothing new to arthouse cinema, one can hardly find another place like Taiwan where queer-themed youth movies have earned such great mainstream popularity, following the successful formula of youth idol dramas. From the latest Spider Lilies to earlier releases like Eternal Summer, Formula 17, and Blue Gate Crossing, this gay youth film genre has been gaining momentum in recent years in Taiwan. Strictly speaking, not all of these titles fall under the category of "gay and lesbian film", which requires a close examination of sexual orientation on a personal, social, or even political level, but the prevalence of same-sex relationships in Taiwanese cinema already constitutes a noteworthy and interesting phenomenon.
Hong Kong's commercial cinema saw a rise of queer themes in the mid-1990s with films like Swordsman II (1992), I Wanna Be Your Man (1994), The Lovers (1994), and He is a Woman, She is a Man (1994). However, these titles, like Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet to be discussed below, carefully reinforce heterosexual themes instead of directly depicting same-sex relationships like in the Taiwanese films mentioned above. There have also been some acclaimed Chinese films centering on same-sex relationships, such as Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine (1993), Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together (1997), and Stanley Kwan's Lan Yu (2001), plus many more independent works. But these titles, however well known, have remained in the realm of arthouse, as opposed to the recent Taiwanese queer films that are emerging as a popular trend.
A discussion on Taiwanese queer cinema should perhaps start with renowned writer Pai Hsien Yung's literary works. Born in Taiwan, Pai moved to the States in 1963, and taught at University of California, Santa Barbara until he retired in 1994. His literary works carry abundant queer elements, and it is actually the 2003 TV adaptation of his Crystal Boys that started the current trend of idol-starring queer-themed youth dramas and films.
Crystal Boys, Pai's only novel among his many short stories, uncovers the hidden gay community centered around Taipei's New Park (renamed the 228 Memorial Peace Park in 1996) in the 1970s, from the viewpoint of a gay teenager who runs away from home. It was first made into a film titled The Outsiders by director Yu Kan Ping in 1986, but the focus was shifted from underground gay culture to the protagonist's rebellious character and an old gay man's friendship with his female friend. As martial law still ruled over Taiwan before 1987, any potentially subversive issue, be it political or social, was by and large muffled.
Films like Blue Gate Crossing and Eternal Summer concentrate on personal struggles over sexual orientation, and avoid the issues of social oppression and family opposition portrayed in Crystal Boys and The Wedding Banquet. Formula 17 avoids even the personal struggle, deliberately taking away all questions about sexual orientation by simplifying the world into one gender. Spider Lilies arguably takes it even one step further as, despite the film being promoted as a lesbian film, lesbianism is simply irrelevant to the story. Lesbian director Zero Chou, whose partner Hoho Liu serves as the film's cinematographer, has made her name in Taiwanese queer cinema, in particular with her Golden Horse-winning Splendid Float about drag queens and now Spider Liles.
Starring popular Taiwanese idol singer Rainie Yang and Hong Kong's Isabella Leong from the award-winning Isabella, Spider Lilies revolves around the lesbian love between a webcam girl and a tattoo artist whom the former remembers to be her childhood crush. Meant to be a commercial film targeted at the young market, the film also features Jay of Taiwanese duo Awaking and John Shen of Genki Boys. Without any psychological confusion (even at the age of nine!) or social opposition faced by the protagonists about sexual orientation, the film concerns more with the notions of holding on and letting go of past memories, particularly the devastating 9.21 Earthquake that struck Taiwan in 1999. While it is only briefly mentioned in Eternal Summer, the disaster takes on even greater significance than the lesbian relationship in Spider Lilies.
For a film industry that is known for being almost stubbornly uncommercial, queer films have not only found mainstream box office approval, they have helped to revitalize Taiwanese commercial cinema. The theme of queerness has evolved from a tabooed issue that has to be distracted by male-female friendship in the 1986 Crystal Boys, to a carefully manipulated cultural and generational gap story that pleases both gay and straight in The Wedding Banquet, to the idol-starring Spider Lilies in which same-sex relationship has become just another form of romance, no different from heterosexual ones. In two decades' time, queerness metamorphoses from a tabooed subject into a selling point. Titles on such topics have also moved from arthouse and alternative cinema to the core of Taiwan's idol-driven entertainment business. Thanks to the region's queer literary tradition and unique socio-political background, queer cinema has been able to permeate the general audience, making Taiwan more embracing towards what fails to proliferate in other Chinese communities.
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