Hong Kong movie legends Stephen Chow, Leslie Cheung and Brigitte Lin all starred in films with cringey LGBT characters and plot points that didn’t age well – here’s 5 flicks best forgotten

Oct 9 , 2020

Fleur (left), a recurring minor character of a number of Stephen Chow comedy movies, including Forbidden City Cop (1996). Photo: Newport Entertainment

Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together and Ray Yeung’s Suk Suk bookmark huge leap forward for LGBT representation in Hong Kong cinema, but here are 5 films that simply don’t make the cut today – including All’s Well, Ends Well, Flirting Scholar, and Happy Hour

Representation of the LGBTQ+ community in film and TV has come a long way. The audiences of today expect mainstream culture and media to be diverse and reflect the variety of life, rather than omitting entire communities – even in multiplex-pleasing, mainstream Hong Kong cinema.

Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (1997) was a landmark film focusing on the romantic relationship between two men. It marked a huge leap forward in LGBTQ+ representation in Hong Kong and paved the way for many other feature films with LGBTQ+ characters. Last year, the success of Ray Yeung’s Suk Suk was seen by many as a symbol of the progress that has been made since.

But Hong Kong cinema did not always get it right when it came to depicting non-heterosexual relationships or gender non-conformity, especially throughout the 1980s and 90s. The characters and plots of some films just don’t comfortably right anymore, especially when re-watched through a contemporary lens. Even film legends such as Stephen Chow and LGBTQ+ icon Leslie Cheung have starred in movies that might have been fine during their heydays, but would just make viewers cringe today.

Here are five old Hong Kong films with approaches to the LGBTQ+ community that simply do not make the cut (for some welcome contrast, also check out STYLE’s new list of seven awesome Asian movies with LGBTQ+ storylines).

Happy Hour (1995)

This film is about three friends who get drunk and hook up with a girl they meet in a bar. After a night of debauchery, the girl accuses them of rape, then falls into a coma after a suicide attempt.

As if that isn’t problematic enough, one of the men, played by Andy Hui, pretends to be gay in order to defend himself in the ensuing court case. While Hui’s character is hardly heroic, he isn’t condemned for his actions in the film, either.

All’s Well, Ends Well (1992)

Lunar New Year features are all about slapstick comedy and whimsical plots and All’s Well, Ends Well is the gold standard. The film charts the romantic mishaps of three brothers. The youngest, an effeminate dance instructor played by Leslie Cheung, originally has a contentious relationship with his second cousin, played by Teresa Mo. The two are obviously coded as an effeminate gay man and a butch lesbian, but the film ends with them sleeping together.

Although the argument could be made that the two are bisexual, or that they’re two heterosexual characters with unconventional gender presentations, the film seems more interested in pairing them up as an odd couple for laughs and implying that queer sexual orientations can be “fixed” by some heterosexual sex. Not cool.

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