Regression

The growth of my emotional maturity can be measured in response to 3 gay movies I have watched over the years.

The first, Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together, was a masterpiece of the 90's. Stuttering, fragmented yet lavish, it was cinema at its best, using montage of colour and sound to interconnect yet alienate its characters.

I can never forget the scene of the panoramic Iguazu falls which opened and closed the movie, the brief clasp of parting hands which signified the muted, incandescent connection between two characters, and how I derived a sense of intellectual superiority over those who found it boring.

Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain has been hailed internationally as a seminal breakthrough in cinematic and cultural norms. It thus left me much to doubt about myself when I walked away feeling almost nothing.

While most people around me swooned as if struck to the depths of their soul, I could only ponder at what producers where thinking by casting Anne Hathaway. Yes, the mountain was beautiful, the pacing was poised, the actors convincing. But that's it.

I finally realized that the problem is entirely my own, when I watched Formula 17. Taiwan's 2004 runaway smash hit, it features no woman whatsoever, some stale jokes, some amateur acting, an unreal gay utopian world, and a formulaic plot.

I utterly loved it. I can't understand why. Maybe because it's set in Taipei, a vibrant city I've come to love. Maybe because the actors are so charming in all their exaggerated cariacatures of gay youth, especially the cute country-boy protagonist Tony Yang.

Maybe because I'm just a fluffy romantic at heart, and I watch a movie simply to be entertained away from the real world for 2 hours. Ugh. I've said it. Didn't they say that growing up is all about owning up to yourself?