East Palace, West Palace

The setting is familiar the world over – a section of a big-city park where gay men cruise, but in Zhang Yuan’s stunning East Palace, West Palace the park happens to be the grounds of the Forbidden Palace in Beijing. The locale is crucial, for this means that this picture – even more so than Farewell My Concubine – is one of the first modern Chinese films to deal so directly and outspokenly with gay themes. What makes East Palace such a threatening film goes beyond the see-sawing of sexual domin

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