Auden in Hong Kong!

I rented a Mandarin film last evening called The Map of Sex and Love (2001) not expecting much. I was hoping that the other movie I had rented - Defense d'Aimer (2002) - would be the real star of my weekend movie watching! I ended up watching the Mandarin film twice, taking notes, frequently pressing the pause button to take pictures of scenes. So, yes, let's just say The Map of Sex and Love has now made a permanent place in my map of world cinema. Not since Happy Together (1997) has a Hong Kong film impressed me so much. While there a million things to discuss about this cinema verite-style movie, I will merely concentrate on a tiny scene, towards the end of the film. New York-residing Wei Ming (Bernardo Chow) sends a video letter to his friends back in Hong Kong, where he has been making a documentary. Resting against a rugged wall somewhere in New York, he tells his audience of three back in Hong Kong (a girl who loved him, inspite of knowing that he is gay, a male dancer who becomes his lover during the Hong Kong stay, and a man that the male dancer was once picked up by at a bath house) that when he first arrived in New York a friend had taken him to show the apartment block where Auden lived. He says that outside the block was a plaque which carried two lines of Auden's poetry: "If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me." He says that the plaque has since been stolen. What is interesting is the way the lines are used in the film. When Wei speaks the words, misquoting the line as "If no love can equal be.." the camera shows him. It is the lens of Wei's own camcorder through which we see him. But as he comes to the second line, "Let the more loving one be me" he is no longer there on the screen. It is the director's camera that shows the disappointed, pained expression on the face of Larry, the male dancer, who has loved Wei more than Wei has loved back. And, even more interestingly, as Wei's voice becomes the voice-over, the camera tracks the bathhouse man. The man walks away from the television screen and sits far from Larry, because Larry had hurt him by giving him a fake mobile number. As the camera focusses on the bathhouse man's hurt expression, we hear Wei saying that perhaps the plaque was taken away because nobody wanted to think of themselves as being the more loving one.

Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) was responsible for putting Auden's poetry into the Bestseller Lists 21 years after his death because in the film a gay man, in a voice almost breaking with uncried tears, recites Auden's "Funeral Blues" at the funeral of his lover. I believe The Map of Sex and Love manages an equally successful application of Auden's poetry.

Erratum: In my previous post "preposterous" appeared as "preposteropus"!