Hong Kong writer-director Danny Cheng Wan-Cheung—who goes by the professional name “Scud”—serves up a celebration of pan-sexuality in Utopians, which features lots of casual nudity and depictions of various sexual activities. In this coming-of-age tale, Hins (Adonis), a college student with a rigidly religious girlfriend, is disturbed by vivid, graphic dreams in which male-on-male sex dominates (as in the film's garish opening—a hallucinatory episode with a crucifixion motif). Ming (Jackie Chow), one of Hins's professors, introduces himself to his class as a homosexual, and offers up provocative ideas about utopian sexuality, adopting a laissez-faire attitude toward all forms of sexual expression. Hins and Ming will eventually develop a relationship, but it will hardly be exclusive, incorporating bisexuality and group sex. Scud scatters allusions to gay icons Yukio Mishima, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Derek Jarman—to whom he dedicates the film—throughout Utopians, which concludes with a melodramatic critique of a Hong Kong statute that criminalizes homosexual relations with anyone under the age of 21. A well-made film with a strong message of tolerance, this is recommended for more adventurous collections. (F. Swietek)
Utopians
Breaking Glass, 88 min., in Cantonese w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $21.99, May 16 Volume 32, Issue 4
Utopians
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