EDITORS NOTE from Joz: 8Asians is proud to be a community co-presenter of various films at the 2013 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, presented by Visual Communications.
http://youtu.be/9eMIEViDfd0
Among the many heavy topics in the films of the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival from May 2 to 12, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow provides a touch of humor in a bitter story of a gay man trying to hide his sexuality in a marriage with a woman.
After marring to Ah Feng for nine years, Weichung has never really enjoyed a single day of his marriage or family life, because of his secret that he is gay. He used this marriage which looked perfect in an outsider’s eyes to hide his sexual orientation. To others, he was a loving husband, a hard working man and a caring father. He tried to stay away from his old circle of gay friends in order to maintain his marriage, or the façade he built just to shelter his secret.
“Nobody will find out, because I am already married,” Weichung told his old friend Stephen, a wedding photographer who is also gay and married to a lesbian.
Things changed when his wife Ah Feng wanted a second child. Subsequently, questions were raised in Ah Feng’s mind when she found out Weichung’s strange behaviors and his effort to avoid having sex with her. At the beginning, she thought her husband was having an affair.
He did have an affair with a male flight attendant from Hong Kong. It was love in first sight for both of them. Weichung, trapped in his marriage for nine years, finally had a taste of happiness during the encounter with Thomas the handsome flight attendant.
Stephan the photographer was the spiritual guide of Weichung and San San, who was engaged with Weichung’s sister Mandy and later dumped. He was like a middle man to lure Weichung back to who he was and offered relationship advice to San San from someone who understood both men and women.
The film speaks to a bigger truth about LGBT life in Asia, a place where homosexuality is still a taboo. Many gay men in Asia will marry a lesbian– a xinghun, as Tim wrote about– like Stephen did to enjoy an openly gay life within the two of them. Many gay men marry a straight woman due to the parental pressure and sacrifice their happiness. They try to make themselves believe that they might love women one day as long as they stay in the marriage like Weichung.
Weichung didn’t turn his track in the end, but he said he wanted to sacrifice himself to maintain the fake marriage. Instead, his wife Ah Feng, who was dawned by a suitor in the office that only a divorce would end her loveless marriage and bring her a new chapter of love life.
The film was aesthetic and romantic in a sense, filled with slight humor here and there. A Korean drama actor came out as a voice in Mandy’s head. A co-worker of Ah Feng spoke Mandarin with English words, and San San was a muscular man with a sissy character. Nothing is bitter in the film, but funny and somehow cute. Even the most sexual scene was a slight kiss of Weichung and Thomas in Weichung’s hallucination.
The most symbolic scene in the movie was in the wedding of San San and Mandy’s, Ah Feng told Weichung she wanted a divorce so that both of them could love again. Weichung seemed relieved. When Ah Feng and Weichung left the party, they walked down the aisle when people on both sides threw flowers at them, as if they were just married as a perfect couple, but in the eyes of Weichung and Ah Feng, there slipped a moment of sadness.
