"Stanley Beloved" so named because its final scene takes place at the small beach town of Stanley on Hong Kong Island's south shore, is about two high-school chums who have grown up together.  Jaime is blond and very Caucasian, Kevin is half-Chinese.  Both speak Cantonese, smoke a lot, and posture as typical adolescents.  They are privileged kids who attend the International School.

The crisis occurs when Kevin learns that his Caucasian mother and Chinese father have decided to send him to England to finish school a situation not untypical in Hong Kong.    The two spend the night on the beach at Stanley, where Kevin kisses Jaime as Jaime lies sleeping.

The ensuing closing scene is a wonder of ambiguity in the good sense.  At daybreak, Kevin strips to his shorts and runs into the ocean for a swim and invites Jaime to join him.  Jaime, still fully clothed, declines.  It's too early, and way too cold, he says.  A symbolic statement about their lifelong friendship-turned-romance?  A rebuff, or a message to wait and take it slow.  I'm not sure.  It kept us discussing for hours.  Viewers will decide for themselves and will likely not agree.

I liked "First Love" a bit better because it takes a little more time to develop character and story.  It has a wonderful sound track and some haunting visuals.  Interestingly, the two young men who are the center of "Stanley Beloved" appear also briefly as actors in "First Love" with the same names but as different characters.  Jaime is no longer blond.  They appear as lovers in a troubled relationship perhaps themselves somewhere down the road from Stanley?  Is the second movie intended as a brief sequel to the first?

Neither movie has any overt sex.  It is as if the director challenged himself to tell two interesting gay stories without reverting to the crutch of steamy sex to sell them.  I like this.  It's a daring counterintuitive maneuver.

I am told that most of the actors in these films are not professionals.  Even so, I found them all interesting to watch.  One of the ways I judge the success of a movie or play is whether I feel I would want to meet and spend time with (a) the characters I find there, and (b) the actors who play the characters.  In both of these movies, I felt that way.  I also want to meet the director, Simon Chung, who has a small cameo on the subway in "Stanley Beloved"  I would love to talk with all of them about filmmaking, life, love, acting, and so on.  I would like to know the genesis of these projects.

"First Love" is the age-old story of a student in love with his professor this time at Hong Kong University in an English literature class. Hugh Graham, the professor, is actually teaching a class in mostly gay literature, and we get snippets of E. M. Forster's "Maurice" and Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice"  After an attempted suicide, Hugh also utters a tangential reference to Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying"  Mark, the Chinese student who writes poetry in English, pursues Hugh.  "I wanted you from the beginning" he tells him.

But Hugh, who is past middle age, is possessed of an angst that is part mid-life crisis, professional burn-out, and a sense of personal failure and irrelevance.  He characterizes his own course as useless and most people in Hong Kong as having utter indifference to the arts.  Of his own mediocre play, he says:  "It might just as well have not existed."  His play is entitled, "First Love and Other Pains in the Arse."

There is much of futility, death, and the ghosts of the past in Hugh's despair, added upon when a publisher rejects his play and the department dean delivers the message to him (in the hospital) that he is being fired.  Hugh could easily decide to leave Hong Kong, where he has stayed "far too long" and go home to England.  Mark volunteers to go with him if that becomes his choice.

Mark lost his father to a heart attack when he was 11, and his quest for Hugh is clearly a quest for a father-figure.  He lost his mother when she ran away to America and left his aunt to raise him.  In one poignant scene, she advises him, "Don't get married.  There is something wrong with our family:  People are always abandoning us. In a reference to James 
Joyce's "The Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man" Hugh realizes that Mark's love is genuine and potentially redemptive: "Is it not too late in the day for epiphany"

In the end, Chung does with these two what Forster did with his hero: he saves them.  It's a good ending.  We see Hugh and Mark renting a flat together in Hong Kong, telling the landlord they will "not" be living there together, and standing watching the view from the balcony.  Again, Chung is visually ambiguous.  They stand close together, but only Hugh puts his arm around Mark.  Why?  Does it mean anything?  What?

I found myself wishing them the best and crossing my fingers.  Statistically, their relationship will not endure.  In one scene, Mark invites Hugh out for a drink, and Hugh spends their time together at the bar gazing at someone else, who turns up later leaving Hugh's apartment just as Mark is arriving, and who says to Mark, "The door's not locked."  This 
will not do.  Hugh is also an alcoholic.  If he does not forsake these two lethal addictions, cruising and boozing, he will not have Mark for long, and at his age he will not get another chance.  There is no fool like an old fool, and I hoped with all my heart that he would not be a fool.

Watch these two gems with somebody you love who can discuss them with you.  Your time will be richly repaid.

Bob