Up and Away
Lau Chun-him and Fandy Fan are a fated couple – or are they? – in Angel Teng’s teensy weensy bit bonkers romance.
A Balloon’s Landing
Director: Angel Teng • Writers: Wu Momo, Seven Leung, Angel Teng
Starring: Lau Chun-him, Fandy Fan, Chan Tzu-hsuan, Allison Lin
Taiwan • 1hrs 40mins
Opens Hong Kong May 16 • IIA
Grade: B
Woah, there’s a lot to unpack in Taiwanese director Angel Teng I-han’s A Balloon’s Landing | 我在這裡等你. Let’s put it this way: The film is the year’s first time-travelling gay fantasy-romance road movie. Make sense? It begins life as a garden variety Taiwanese tragic romance (yawn) that eventually pulls in bits of Il Mare/The Lake House thanks to a magical letterbox, then flirts dangerously with the cringey parts of The Time Traveler’s Wife – after some suicide “comedy” to get the ball rolling?
Yeah, it’s a lot to take in at first, but it’s also the kind of film that reminds us to sit the fuck still and wait until the end to see where it goes. Lightning paced by these films’ standards and leaning heavily into Leslie Cheung’s (Cheung is having a moment) 春夏秋冬/ “A Balloon’s Journey” – despite “Four Seasons” being right there in the damn title – the end product winds up showing off a lot of kooky charm. It’s helped along by the crackling dynamic between leads Terrance Lau Chun-him (who is clearly being groomed to be the next Cheung) and Taiwanese actor Fandy Fan Shao-hsun, and everyone else’s willingness to play it straight (no pun intended). Once Teng and co-writers Wu Momo and Seven Leung get past a clunky beginning and shake loose the fan fiction-y elements ( there's a lot of sun glistening off the wet skin of handsome young men), they settle into an oddly compelling drama about romantic fate and rising above challenges you can’t control. It shouldn’t work, but it does.
Thankfully, this is not creepy
Everything starts with successful Hong Kong author Gu Tin-yu (Lau, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In) finding himself embroiled in a plagiarism kerfuffle with a Taiwanese writer, thanks to a freaky amount of narrative crossover between their latest novels. Despondent over his tattered reputation and suddenly tanking career, Tin-yu contemplates suicide at home, but changes his mind and opts for suicide at Taiwan’s Bay of Vanishing Whales. The bay is a fabled coastal spot Tin-yu heard about from Jin Run-fa, a pen pal he had years before, 2003 to be exact, when he was a grad student. Off he goes, eventually finding a guide and driver for his trip in A-Xiang (Fan, Mama Boy), a low-level gangster with a heart of gold.
Of course, A-Xiang initially takes Tin-yu for a ride of the scammy sort, but after preventing him from killing himself at a popular spot that is mos def not the Bay of Vanishing Whales – and this is where the misguided comedy happens – he smartens up and the two kick off a road trip that stops at a peaceful watering hole, a B&B owned by Xia-xia (Chan Tzu-hsuan, The Bridge Curse 2: Ritual), a close friend of A-Xiang’s, and finally a fireworks festival in Kenting (where much of Cape No. 7 was shot). Along the way we learn two things: Tin-yu’s backpack is also magical, given the volume of how many changes of clothes it holds, there’s an undeniable attraction between Tin-yu and A-Xiang, and they are fated for each other.
Saying much more about the plot would torpedo the modest pleasures of A Balloon’s Landing’s twists, such as they are, and deflate (heh heh) its emotional beats. And yes, Teng’s revelatory flashback structure does give rise to moments of disappointment. A-Xiang’s gangster life preps us for a Bury Your Gays moment, and messing with the timeline makes Tin-yu look pervy for a hot second. Needless to say this is where the film demands patience. Just wait; let the story unwind completely. When it does the final result is a sort of weird and winning mishmash of genres and references: the two are personality polar opposites. A-Xiang is the optimistic, wing-it kind of extrovert the dour, serious, introverted Tin-yu is not. There’s a dear, dear female friend who’s positioned as a romantic rival. A-Xiang’s gang brings menace to the road trip. Nonetheless DOP Ai Chung keeps the story sunny with her warm, fuzzy photography, and Lau and Fan make us like these guys.
So let’s address the elephant in the room. There’s been some snarking online that A Balloon’s Landing is “fake BL” and that the poster art is “misleading” and that it’s “queer-baiting”. If that’s your takeaway then so be it. No one here’s going to argue someone’s impressions are wrong. But it’s hard to deny that one dude double-checking his outfit and hair while gazing at another dude isn’t said dude getting all nervous about a hot date. That looked kind of like the second act misunderstanding that blows up the relationship to us. — DEK