Feeding Boys, Ayaya

Deplorably boring film consisting mostly of dialog supplemented with extended waste of film lingering on unrelated scenes of a guy chasing a dog through a park apparently intended to extend length of film to a required viewing time.

Filming is of poor quality, with no compensation for backlit scenes, resulting in blacked-out underexposed 'actors.'

Lots of religious Christian bible thumping comparisons of scriptural condemnations of homosexuality.

I purchased this as an addition to our Gay & Lesbian Community Center library, and now regret doing so.

Save your money; Don't waste your time viewing.

The cover notes on the HK DVD release describe the writer and director of this film, Cui Zi En, as probably China's most independent and daring filmmaker. On the evidence of this work, I have to disagree. You will have to go a long way to find another film that offers so little. An amateur cast delivering stilted dialog and filmed by a hand-held camera, made almost unwatchable by the lack of anything but ambient lighting, plus long, long scenes where nothing happens. In particular, it is this last aspect that highlights the fact that this filmmaker has little to say; there is no justification for having scenes where characters just wonder round a park for 2 or more minutes for no particular reason. This film has a running time of 80 minutes. Watch this and you'll swear that time has stood still. Avoid like the plague.

Feeding the Boys -- a very sexual reference, in that women provide nourishment for their young by giving mother's milk, and what do male prostitutes provide? feeding the boys... pretty rough analogy. the writer slash director way over does the constant bible thumping; our star's unmarried brother is a religious fanatic, not only always harping on his brother, trying to get him to find a more respectable occupation, but standing on the street, and waving the bible back and forth, chanting. and when the zealot croaks (god's wrath ?), he convinces his girlfriend to continue his street corner philosophy. there ARE some good points here... honest efforts on the part of both brothers to see the other's side, and they do have numerous, serious discussions, but the repetition of the argument "soar to the heavens" or "flow downhill, like the rivers" goes on and on and on. any sane person would have left the room, or the house, rather than keep repeating the same thing over and over. and we keep seeing them do the same routines on the bridge. needed more material. this would have made a great short film. needed better editing. there are some great scenery of Beijing. good to see these types of issues being discussed in china, where such things were forbidden for so long. Written and directed by Zi'en Cui. has eleven directing credits, as of today. seems to focus on LGBT life and religious themes in some of them. it's good, but would have benefited by leaving much of the repetition on the editing floor.

This film is about a young Chinese man in Beijing, who got inspired by a male prostitute to become a male prostitute.

This film is bad. I don't normally mind low budgets, but in this film it really hurted me to watch it. The filmmakers did not even have appropriately wide angle lens to film most scenes, so most of the time, we could not even see the characters on the screen properly. Take the music choosing scene for example, the guy who wanted to choose music was at the edge of the screen. Only his face could be shown, not even the ears could be seen.

Another big problem is that they often filmed it against bright light, such as against a window of a room. The resultant effect was that only shadows could be seen. The third major problem was that the background music was highly annoying. It consisted of weird sounds, which was totally out of place with the film. A further problem was that the film was inundated with totally irrelevant scenes, such as people playing Tai Chi on a bridge or the traffic on a motorway.

This film seemed more like a psychotic experiment. Avoid this film like the Black Death!

The land of the Sleeping Dragon has been given license to make movies. This particular film has made the circuit and has been touted by many as Avante guard. The director Cul Zi en has crafted his film to promote cinematic interest and mounting international concern for one of China's fastest growing problems, male prostitution. The film itself is, by western standards, ill conceived and poorly constructed. Furthermore, it proves an ill woven tapestry of minor characters, spectral images, philosophical dialogs and a tangled message which has viewers wondering, if they are in the wrong theater. Lacing a shadowy musical composer who's role and purpose is never fully explained, with that of an elder brother, who's role is equally sketchy at best is confusing enough. His aim is? To save his younger brother from the brutal streets of Bejing. What little is understood of Cul Zi en's message is clear if one is on medication, but the options of a boy prostitutes in any country is doubtful at best. Sandwiched between overt poverty, harsh imprisonment, armies of religious zealots and the mounting problems of a ambivalent nation, prostitution, like any vice, becomes morally offensive, but a necessary evil. The film, like it's message, is destined for the shelves in the library of humanity.