The highest-grossing LGBTQ film in Taiwan's history, as well as the most popular Taiwanese film of 2020, prolific TV series manufacturer Patrick Liu's second feature film YOUR NAME ENGRAVE HEREIN unmitigatedly draws on the “teen idol-making” formula and tells a fervid first love between two boys in the '80s as Taiwan's martial law ends.
Both are senior students in a Catholic high school, A-Han (Edward Chen) and Birdy (Tseng) are too eye-pleasing a pair to look at, and what the script characterizes as the hurdles erecting in front of their forbidden affair are the rigid Catholic indoctrination and the society's overall benightedness. Cruel bullying and homophobic acts in the school are not eschewed, Eric Lin has a small role as a bully victim who asserts his homosexuality without any ghost of shame. But that is tolerable, because the movie's mass appeal lies in watching two heartthrobs wrestling with their repressed feelings towards each other. Edward Chen delves into A-Han's tormented soul to the hilt, puzzled by his sexual orientation and weighed down by the enormous shame instigated by jaundiced religion and a heteronormative society,A-Han experiences his rite of passage in a gallimaufry of confusion and outpourings, Chen makes an oceanic endeavor to live up to audience's expectation, he is a powder peg of emotions, and the impact is forceful and totally aligned with our perception of his character .
Birdy (a homage to Alan Parker's BIRDY, 1984, wherein its titular protagonist is an eccentric boy who believes he is a bird), on the other hand, is colored with mystique and ambiguity, who apparently confirms to the stereotype of a straight boy who is the crush of his gay best friend. But Birdy's masculinity masks his own problems, Tseng is impulsive and full of archness. It is understandable for the film to adopt A-Han's perspective and leave Birdy's in the shadow, but the narrative is overloaded with such heightened dramatic charges, when the quiet, tacit resignation arrives 30 years later, it feels like a non sequitur, their reunion is a contrivance because their separation doesn't make sense in the first place.
Female roles take a backseat here, Mimi Shao's Banban is a cavalier gooseberry who has no distinction of her own, and the two actors who play A-Han and Birdy in their late 40s, Leon Dai and Jason Wong, are whimsical casting decisions. Bolstered by its arousing eponymous theme song, YOUR NAME ENGRAVE HEREIN risks of erring on the side of melodramatics, but the earnestness of its message and performances makes it a grand crowdpleaser, and it is not a small miracle in terms of queer subject's visibility and normalization in the mainstream cinema, at least in Taiwan, hope springs eternal.
referential entries: Mag Hsu and Hsu Chih-Yen's DEAR EX (2018, 7.8/10); Chung Mong-Hong's A SUN (2019, 7.9/10).
English Title: Your Name Engraved Herein
Original Title: The name engraved in your heart
Year: 2020
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Taiwan
Language: Mandarin, English, Min Nan
Director: Patrick Liu
Screenwriter: Chu Yu-Ning
Music: Chris Hou Hou Zhijian, Jason Huang Huang Yuxun
Cinematography: Yao Hung-I
Editing: Milk Su
Cast:
Edward Chen Chen Haosen
Tseng Chin-Hua Zeng Jinghua
Mimi Shao
Fabio Grangeon
Leon Dai
Jason Wang Wang Zhixian
Lotus Wang
Huang Liang
Barry Qu Qu Xianping
Eric Lin Lin Huimin
Soda Voyu
Chen Yi-Ruei
Honduras Hong Shengde
Lung Shao-Hua
Waa Wei Wei Ruxuan
Akira Chen Chen Wenbin
Rating: 7.0/10
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