Hong Kong filmmaker Ray Yeung’s new film, Front Cover, is a story about fitting in and identity
A gay Chinese man who spent half his life overseas, Yeung understands what it means to be an outsider
When Ray Yeung is asked – and it happens often – why he “makes gay films”, the filmmaker and lawyer wants to shoot back with: “why do you make straight films?” But he’ll bite his tongue – his films do the talking.
Based in Hong Kong, Yeung’s films have not only drew attention to the marginalisation of both overseas Chinese and the gay community, but also drew explicit parallels between characters coming to terms with their ethnic identities and their sexual ones, and show the ways in which marginalisation can lead to denial and self-loathing.
His second feature, Front Cover, premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival in the summer and opens the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival on September 19 at Festival Walk (Yeung is also the chairman of the latter), playing again on September 21 at AMC Pacific Place. The film concerns a gay Chinese-American stylist, Ryan (played by Jake Choi), who rejects his Chinese identity but is asked to style a patriotic mainland Chinese actor, Ning (James Chen), who only wants to work with a Chinese stylist, and who turns out to be gay but closeted. Sparks fly between them, but when a mainland magazine threatens to out Ning, Ryan has to choose whether to save the actor’s career by denying their relationship.
Educated in the UK from the age of 14, Yeung lived there for more than a decade before moving to New York to study at Columbia University. He returned to Hong Kong earlier this year after obtaining a master’s degree in filmmaking.
People ask the reason why I always deal with culture clashes ... I’ve always felt like an outsider, I’m really interested in ethnic minorities, and in not being part of the dominant culture.
“The story is very much about fitting in,” he says. “We can all identify with pretending to be someone we are not, in order to fit in. My personal experience, being one of very few Chinese people at boarding school, was that in order to fit in I had to be as British as possible. What I’m trying to say is that everyone puts up a front – sometimes you just have to pretend. And everyone has a secret.”