Loading ...Hailed as “a rare film from Hong Kong, wise and profound” by the 2001 Hong Kong International Film Festival, The Map of Sex and Love explores history past and present, and love gay and straight through three interrelated stories – Rubber Band, Belgrade, and Nazi Gold. In Rubber Band, a gay dancer is advised to heal his perversity by snapping a rubber band against his wrist.
In Belgrade, a girl has a traumatic revelation while travelling in Eastern Europe; and in Nazi Gold, a filmmaker has an eerie encounter with an aftermath of the Third Reich in Macau. A tongue-in-cheek look at Hong Kong’s Disney as well as a homage to Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) by the late Jean-Dominique Bauby, Evans Chan’s film maps the secrets of history and the human heart with a true cartographer’s eyes. Bernardo Chow, Cherie Ho, and Victor Ma, who received a nomination for The Best Supporting Actor at the Taiwan Golden Horse Film Festival, give riveting performances.
A young Chinese-American man travels to Hong Kong to make a documentary film about the opening of a new theme park and becomes involved in a series of complex relationships that lead him on a journey of self-discovery.
The filmmaker and a young woman become friends traumatized by a visit to the Balkans and falls in love with a gay dancer and together the three struggle to reconcile their pasts while dealing with love and sex in a highly repressive society.
The Map of Sex and Love takes the three souls to Macau where they come face to face with Wei Ming’s part of the story about his hometown and his family’s problems- they are being added to a string of allegations that they are participating with the funneling of Nazi Gold Bars.
Would the story bring the three to a different destiny as they face life in a new sight together?
In a society that represses Gay relationships, would the Map of Sex and Love bring them to find the truth and acceptance they have longed for?
Reviews
“Perhaps the meaning of Evans Chan’s movie is really The Map of Sex and Love — the paradoxical relations between the sexes are far more important here than sex…During two hours…each of the three main characters is on his/her own journey. They cross borders in real life and in their dreams…Evans Chan’s film is not an action film. In certain aspects it is close to the style of Wong Kar-wai. But while the latter moves towards aesthetisizing vague sensual states, Chan looks almost like a documentary filmmaker in spite of the similarity of certain imagery techniques…
[The Map] is indicative of what sets the specific tone in modern-day cinema, namely the mood. Here we are talking about blending video and movie images…As for Chan, in his movie he unequivocally points out that video is a way for homosexual minorities, provincials and losers to have “their own” cinema, which needs neither a huge budget nor a big audiences, which always wants to see normative (not dull) aesthetics. Thus Chan’s cinema unites minorities and society. In this sense he draws the love lines, which cross the boundaries of the sexes, progress and national identity.”
– Oleg Aronson, (Moscow Film Festival Daily, June 29, 2001
Director: Evans Chan
Actors: Bernardo Chow, Victor Ma, Cheri Ho, Lindzay Chan
Language: Cantonese
Subtitles: English
DVD Release Date: October 7, 2003
Run Time: 132 minutes
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