At the beginning of Speechless, a European man (Pierre-Mathieu Vital) is found in a remote corner of rural China in a seeming trance-state—swimming naked, while also refusing to speak. When the local hospital decides to transfer him to a mental institution, a sympathetic orderly named Jiang (Gao Qilun) decides to liberate the stranger instead, taking him on the road. By chance Jiang discovers that the silent man is named Luke, a French national who enrolled in a foreign-exchange program that brought him to China. Luke's trauma stems from a fateful transgendered love triangle with two Chinese medical students, an idyll that wound up being poisoned by jealousy. This ultra-melodramatic turn of events might be hard to take were it not for the non-sensational, neo-realist style of director and co-writer Simon Chung, who here creates a sensitive gay drama. Recommended. (C. Cassady)
Speechless
Breaking Glass, 96 min., in Mandarin w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $21.99, Dec. 4 Volume 28, Issue 1
Speechless
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