johnxmackay

After watching Mr. Lee's recent feature DRIFT, I was finally able to find a rare copy of his "first" feature FLOW on rental. FLOW was a 360 degree shift from DRIFT. First of all, it was sort of considered his first feature because Mr. Lee cleverly stitched together five of his short films... four of which range from highly experimental to a moving Asian boy meets Asian boy romance, and the last one wraps the four together about the fictional filmmaker's of the four short films.

It's a tough film to describe, because there's just so much in it. The scope of the film is ambituous and exciting which evokes the spirit of New Queer Cinema in the vein of POISON. At the same time, the film feels very personal... It's a very curious and brilliant film... and yes, like every film, there are things that work and don't... but just for the sake of its ambition and willingness to break all boundaries, visually and thematically, it's well-worth watching.

A thoughtful and touching film, DRIFT tells a simple break-up story with a narrative twist midway about a young gay man, a screenwriter in Los Angeles, embarking on three different scenarios of a love triangle and romantic entanglements.

I attended the film's world premiere at the San Francisco Gay Film Festival without a great deal of expectation (as you know... you get quite a mix of films there... a couple of exceptional ones and others are just very so-so), and I was pleasantly surprised. I was moved walking out of the theater and the film stayed with me for several days.

Mr. Lee, whose other works I haven't seen, seemed pretty young on stage at the Q&A after the screening. As a Gen-XYer, Lee has produced a surprisingly mature work about relationships. He said that the work was personal. And I believe that the film being personal really added to the emotional impact of the piece.

There aren't a lot of gay films about relationships, and this is certainly a well-made one. I highly recommend you taking a look at DRIFT, although there are some parts which could be considered slow and over-literary/pretentious to some audience. As icing on the cake, there are also some hot and sexy scenes.

A great idea... a gay thriller about a gay serial killer... and the production values are not bad... BUT... the lead actor who plays the cop is just terrible, and the serial killer is also not menacing enough. At the end, it's just a silly and laughable film with a good idea. Has some camp values though.