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Based on real events, "Your Name Engraved Herein" depicts a love story that starts in 1987 between two high school students in Taiwan. One tries to confess his sexuality to his priest, but receives no blessing. The other hides his feelings and eventually settles down with a woman. The story then jumps 20 years forward, to Canada, where a quiet revolution is underway and the two lovers can finally reveal their true feelings.

"Call Me by Your Name" (2017) meets "Maurice" (1987). "Your Name Engraved Herein" resonates the rites of passage of LGBTQ rights in Taiwan.

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The Taiwanese LGTB love drama "Your Name Engraved Herein" opens with the popular quotation from The Song of Solomon 8:7 about the power of love that can neither be quenched by water, nor drowned by the floods: "If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, his offer would be viewed with utter contempt". And the religious reference is in its right place as an introduction to the interesting chapter of the Taiwanese (relatively recent) history marked by political changes, which was at the same time stuck in stubborn conservatism.

One of the titular characters – Chang A-Han (Edward Chen), a young student with a despotic father and a strict Catholic upbringing, is faced with many challenges. It's 1987, shortly after the Martial Law in Taiwan was being lifted, and the wind of change is still blowing very mild over the society. A-Han gets scorned at home for his dream of becoming a musician, and for having chosen the social studies major "which is for losers" over the practicality of science. The young man is not treated with contempt only at home, his confidante Father Oliver (Fabio Grangeon) has difficulties in accepting A-Han's confessed homosexuality, trying to convince him about the wrongness of the same-sex love. On the other hand, the Canadian expat who came to China many years ago is at least willing to listen, and his role becomes the one of a psychiatrist, and less of a priest.

The conversations between the two are shot in close-ups by the director of photography Hung-I Yao (the man behind Bi Gan's mesmerizingly beautiful Cannes Un certain Regard contender "Long Day's Journey Into Night", 2018) in warm yellow tones that bring the emotions surrounding the right to love and being loved closer to the viewer. It's the power of semi-profile that does it, and the two men gazing at the distance, like digging precious pieces of memory from the hidden corners of subconsciousness. Father Oliver's words sound less and less convincing, as it becomes apparent that there is more to his immigration to China than he wants to admit. Was he also close to abandon his religious beliefs, is the question that comes to mind after carefully listening to everything he has to say about love and passion. Grangeon's performance is gripping, and he carries the film as much as the two leads.

After the major political change, the military influence in Taiwan is still palpable and the life in the Catholic school that A-Han is attending is almost the same as it was before – coloured by masculine discipline. Always observed, a group of youngsters including a gang of bullies, is trying to flee their dormitories at night to meet girls for stolen carnal moments or to buy snacks and booze. If caught, they have to deal with physical punishment.

Under such circumstances, A-Han meets the love of his life, a dreamy introvert Birdy Wang (Jing-Hua Tseng) during the swim training at school, and it's the immediate, mutual attraction whose nature will unfold slowly. "Your Name Engraved Herein" doesn't unfold as a typical "stepping out of a closet" narrative, and the sheer sexuality is never a topic. It's the emotional suit that interests the director Kuang-Hui Liu, who's concentrating on the difficult circumstances under which people were discovering their socially unacceptable love interests.

The way Kuang-Hui Liu is bonding Birdy and A-Han in the script co-penned with Jie Zhan and Alcatel Wu is thoughtful and time-faithful. Bravery gets shied away by the fear of social rejection, emotions get replaced by the practicality of the correct social behavior. At the same time, the film is a great homage to the music of Charlie Parker, with the jazz variations accompanying the story, but it also calls for another reference – Alan Parker's "Birdy" (1984) with Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage in main roles, in terms of emotional (and not sexual) connection between the two men.

Interesting is also the director's take on the merging of "boys and girls" school into one, with the patriarchal and very Catholic set of rules. When Birdy's alibi girlfriend Ban Wu (Mimi Shao) gets major demerits for his actions, while he gets only detention, the hypocrisy of the "new open society" gets fully unmasked.

"Your Name Engraved Herein" is not a classical story about love between two people of the same sex. There is no real happy end, and nobody gets really naked. It pays attention to historic details and it shows another kind of reality, the one that is just a very short step back into the past, unkind to personal choices and the individual's wish to break free from the chains imposed by the society. When it gets too emotional, it does for a reason, even though a slightly less Broadway-like ending would have been more fitting.

Source: Marina D. Richter, March 16, 2020 (asianmoviepulse.com)

Your Name Engraved Herein (2020)

A film by Kuang Hui Liu

Directed by Kuang Hui Liu

Written by Yu-Ning Chu, Jie Zhan, Alcatel Wu

Starring: Edward Chen, Jing Hua Tseng, Fabio Grangeon, David Hao-Chi Chiu, Leon Dai, Jason Wang, Jean-François Blanchard

Cinematography by Hung-i Yao

Music by Chris Hou, Jason Huang

Art Direction by Kuo-Chen Yao

Costume Design by Amanda Deng

Produced by Yu Ning Chu, Danielle Yen, Liu Zhi-Syuan

Country: Taiwan
Language: Taiwanese Mandarin
Running time: 118 minutes

Release date: September 26, 2020 (Taiwan)

Watch the trailer

Download the movie using torrent

Link

Size: 2.18 GB

Subtitles: English, Greek, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Hebrew, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Vietnamese, Thai, Turkish

Theme Song from "Your Name Engraved Herein", by Crowd Lu (Official Music Video)

Festivals & Awards

2020 Osaka Asian Film Festival - Main Competition

— Yakushi Pearl Award: Best Supporting Actor – Leon Dai

2020 Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival – Opening Film (canceled due to COVID-19)

2020 Taipei Film Festival

— Best Supporting Actor Nominee – Leon Dai

— Best New Talent Nominee – Edward Chen

2020 Taiwan International Queer Film Festival – Opening Film

2020 Hong Kong International Film Festival – KALEIDOSCOPE: Fantastic Beats

2020 Slovak Queer Film Festival – Official Selection

2020 Mostra São Paulo International Film Festival

2020 57th Golden Horse Awards

— Best Original Film Song Winner

— Best Cinematography Winner

— Best Supporting Actor Nominee – Leon Dai

— Best New Performer Nominee – Edward Chen

— Best Original Film Score Nominee

The Real Events That Inspired "Your Name Engraved Herein", Taiwan's Highest-Grossing LGBTQ Film of All Time

Director Patrick Liu did not play the trumpet in his high school marching band. Unlike Chang Jia-Han, the lead character in Liu's movie "Your Name Engraved Herein", Liu played the flute. But there's special meaning to the instrument of choice for Chang Jia-Han (Edward Chen) – nicknamed A-Han. "To quote our composer, the trumpet has a sound quality of wanting to say something, but not being able to get it out", Liu tells TIME in Mandarin. This feeling is familiar to A-Han. Pressure builds inside him as he falls for bandmate Wang Birdy (Jing-Hua Tseng) and wonders if he will ever be able to freely express his love. The feeling is also familiar to Liu.

Of the few dozen LGBTQ films in the history of Taiwanese cinema, Liu's has been the most successful at the box office – "Your Name Engraved Herein", which premieres globally on Netflix December 23, is Taiwan's highest-grossing LGBTQ-themed movie of all time. Earlier in December, the movie surpassed NT$100M (around US$3.5M) and is one of only two domestic films to reach this marker in 2020. The movie screened locally beginning in September, more than a year after the self-governing island became the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. But the film focuses on a period long before this right existed, in 1987, when martial law had just lifted, prompting Taiwan toward a gradual transition in the direction of greater liberties including freedom of speech and press. At the time, homophobia was widespread and openly gay individuals were largely ostracized by society.

It's against this backdrop that A-Han and Birdy's story unfolds as their friendship grows into something more. The particular arc of A-Han is about "80%" based on Liu's own experiences, according to the director. "Originally, my intention wasn't to make a gay film, it was to make a personal film", he says. "This is about my first love, and my first love happened to be a story of a boy liking another boy." Whatever his intention at the outset, "Your Name Engraved Herein" is fast on its way to becoming a new classic of LGBTQ cinema.

Bringing his own story to the screen

Prior to this film, Liu had primarily worked on idol drama series that he describes as overly dramatic and mostly detached from reality. With the new project, the director wanted to create something more intimate. He teamed up with producer Arthur Chu, who had attended the same high school as Liu and was familiar with his story. Through A-Han's perspective, Liu recounts aspects of his first love: crossing paths with a woman, played by Mimi Shao, who turned the relationship into a love triangle; confiding in the school priest, Father Oliver, about his crush.

Some of the most piercing lines in the film come during the scenes when an exasperated A-Han questions this religious figure about why his love goes against the Bible's teachings. These scenes are not entirely drawn from Liu's experiences with the priest at his school, but they reflect some of the director's views. "During the process of writing the script, what I thought was that no one can play the role of God and judge people for their gender or who they want to love", says Liu, who grew up in a Christian household. "We are not God so we don't have the right to be like him and tell Adam and Eve, you are naked and sinful". The tension between faith and sexuality is one of the main forces driving the film, which opens with a line from Song of Solomon 8:7: "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it".

The bittersweet feeling of overdue change

Production for "Your Name Engraved Herein" started in 2018, before the legislation for marriage equality was enacted in Taiwan. "At that time, it was a very heated topic", Liu says, "The opposition was actually quite vocal about this". In November 2018, voters showed their support for restricting marriage to a union between a man and a woman and against implementing LGBT education at schools, in a referendum designed to be a measure of public opinion that would advise lawmakers. At the time, the Acting Director of Amnesty International Taiwan called the results "a bitter blow and a step backwards for human rights in Taiwan".

When parliament voted to legalize same-sex marriage on May 17, 2019 and President Tsai Ing-wen signed the legislation into effect days after, the historic milestone brought with it some mixed feelings for Liu. "When I saw people celebrating on the streets, I actually felt a little bit sorrowful because for the people from my generation – who were born in the '70s, for example – it may be too late for them", he says. Many were not able to catch what he calls the "train of happiness". "I would like to highlight some of the unfortunate stories that may have come too early so they didn't get to see the celebration that we see today", Liu explains about his approach to his work. "Your Name Engraved Herein" captures this sentiment. More than any other factor, the prevailing attitudes of 1980s Taiwan threaten to keep A-Han and Birdy apart.

Liu's film honors one particular figure who has fought for gay rights for more than 30 years: activist Chi Chia-wei. In one scene, A-Han and Birdy see Chi protesting against sexual orientation discrimination on the streets of Taipei with a sign that says "homosexuality is not a disease", before police swarm toward him. "We wanted to put that segment into the film to pay tribute to what he has done all these years", Liu says. In fact, he says the production crew met with Chi lao-shi – Liu uses the honorific term referring to a teacher – and discussed his portrayal in the movie. One of Chi's iconic protest looks was an outfit made of condoms, and this is the attire he's wearing when A-Han and Birdy see him. "Our costume designer simply replicated the outfit", Liu said, "and the character actually protested on the site where he protested in the past".

Spreading a message of tolerance across Asia and beyond

Taiwan is one of the rare exceptions in Asia with marriage rights for same-sex partnerships, even if acceptance of the policy is not ubiquitous. "We really hope that through Netflix the LGBT communities in other parts of Asia can see it", Liu says. "The LGBT communities need a movie like this to tell them, ‘You are allowed to love, you are not guilty’". Among other countries, he specifically expressed hope for "Your Name Engraved Herein" to reach Malaysia and Singapore, where laws that criminalize same-sex relations remain in place. These two places carry special meaning because they are home to the songwriters – Hsu Yuan-Ting, Chia Wang and Chen Wen-Hua – who composed the film's theme song. Titled after the movie and performed by artist Crowd Lu, the track has already won Best Original Song at Taiwan's prestigious Golden Horse Awards with the music video approaching 20 million views on YouTube. The trio of songwriters flew to Taiwan for the Golden Horse Awards. As Liu recalls, "They were very excited that their work can actually be nominated and connect with an LGBT film".

With "Your Name Engraved Herein", Liu and Chu have crafted a story specific to Taiwan that is rich with political history, but universal in its message. "There are no differences between homosexual or heterosexual relationships", Liu says. "There's still pain, there's still envy. We hope to show people that in homosexual relationships, love is still love."

As much as "Your Name Engraved Herein" is a reflection of Liu's past, it has also been a catalyst for his future. "When I started to produce this film, I was thinking about whether I should come out to my mom", he says, noting that his mother comes from a conservative background intertwined with her church community. At the beginning of the project, he kept details about the movie vague and said it was about "two young people falling in love in high school". But during this past Chinese New Year, Liu's mom brought out a bag of gold and said it would be his once he gets married. "I don't know where my courage came from, but I decided to tell her that I'm actually gay and I'm not going to marry a girl", Liu recalls. She was initially shocked, but, referring to Taiwan's recent policy changes, she changed her tune. "It's fine", she said. "I think now you can get married as well."

Source: Kat Moon, December 18, 2020 (time.com)