fIn most countries, progress means that people are moving from the countryside to the cities. They leave their homes and build their own lives. At some point they come back home, usually as visitors, and then the question usually arises as to whether one life fits with the other, the new with the old, with the family with the independent one in the city.
No place names are mentioned in the film “Moneyboys” by CB Yi, but the main information is clear: the action takes place in China, the country that has been writing perhaps the most breathtaking history of progress in world history for several decades. A young man named Liang Fei also went to a big city for a personal reason. He is gay. As a money boy, he makes quite good money, he meets rich men and is sexually available to them.
The family would lose face
When he then drives back to his village to burn money at his mother’s grave (a ritual typical of the place), there is also a big meal for him. A couple of uncles come along, everyone enjoys it, at first the tone is scratchy, but gradually it becomes more irritated. Because Fei will soon be 30 years old, and it is not yet clear that he has found a woman with whom he could have children.
Soon he will be so old that a village girl will just take him. And he may have missed that chance too. For the family, not having children means losing face. And that’s not even mentioning Fei’s secret, which at least his cousin Long seems to suspect. He follows him into the city, literally pushes himself on him and is soon almost even more successful as a money boy than Fei, who was able to afford an elegant apartment with a roof terrace. First, Long treats himself to a motorbike, a sleek, yellow vehicle.
On the mainland, queer issues are becoming increasingly difficult
“Moneyboys” had its world premiere in July last year in the “Un Certain Regard” series in Cannes. At first glance, this is a typical auteur film from China, but there is a special story behind it. Because the director with the stage name CB Yi is Austrian. He also chose the pseudonym because it created a gap between his past in the People’s Republic and his new life.
He would like to counteract the surveillance state that China is developing into with a small diversionary maneuver. As a teenager, he followed his father to what was then a foreign country in central Europe. He sought a reunion with his homeland by studying sinology at the University of Vienna, but he found his calling at the film academy. With Michael Haneke (director) and Christian Berger (camera) he learned the art of cinema. It then took a considerable amount of time before he was able to shoot his first feature film, “Moneyboys”. And for practical reasons he had to switch to Taiwan, the small, independent, democratic country off the coast of the huge mainland with the communist People’s Republic.
The gap between the generations
Anyone who is a little familiar with Southeast Asian cinema will perhaps be able to feel the special atmosphere of Taipei in one or the other scene. Queer issues are becoming increasingly difficult on the mainland, as CB Yi explains over the phone. While homosexuality is not forbidden, it is treated as taboo. And in general, the regime has tightened the reins in almost all areas in recent years, and the freedom for independent cinema is also becoming increasingly precarious.
Taiwan, on the other hand, is not unfamiliar to CB Yi. Growing up in southern China, not too far from the mainland island nation, he best recognizes his childhood memories in films by the great Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien (“The Boys from Fengkuei”, “Goodbye South, Goodbye “). In “Moneyboys” you can clearly see how quickly progress in China has torn the generations apart. As in many other films from the country, this is often evident in scenes in which food is eaten.
Once, Fei and Long are sitting in a fancy restaurant with some friends. A young man and his wife announce that they want to move, to another city, to a more traditional life: have children, start a family, fulfill the parents’ great wish that everything goes on as planned. But the six years that lie behind them, the free life in the anonymity of a city where you can escape observation and social pressure a little, that was the greatest time of his life, says the future father.
“Moneyboys” thrives on this tension, and he finds a beautiful, unobtrusive aesthetic form for this tension. The transition between the worlds is marked by a ferry, which a young man steers by hand with the help of a rope – an almost contemplative act that hits the basic tone of the film quite well. Progress and retreat, departure and distancing in a complex movement.
“Money Boys” is in cinemas from Thursday.
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