Enter the Clowns (2002)

Beautiful, interesting and incredible cinema

The innovative Chinese filmmaker, film scholar, screenwriter, novelist, activist and gay academic Cui Zi En, known worldwide for his films 'Zhi tongzhi' (2009), 'Jiu yue' (2001), 'Feeding Boys, Ayaya' (2003 ), 'Nannan nünü - Nan Nan Nü Nü' ('Men and Women'), 1999, 'Queer China, Comrade China' (2008), among others, makes a surprisingly transgressive debut in 'Chou jue deng chang' ('Enter the Clowns').
Inspired by the likes of Andy Warhol and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, but set in a specifically Chinese context, the filmmaker, novelist and queer activist adapts his own novel of the same name to explore sexual identity and gender through a series of vignettes about transgender people.
Made in 2001 in digital format, the film, of the dramatic genre, which does not shy away from showing extreme sexual content, eroticism and nudity, revolves around mothers who change their sex, dissatisfied wives who seek solace in the arms of any other man and other transgressions of propriety, when in 82 minutes straight, gay and gender-fluid Beijingers unleash a whirlwind of transsexual mayhem in this groundbreaking debut from the noted filmmaker queer from China.
Our protagonist, Xiao Bo (played by Yu Bo) lives in a world where the lines that define men and women are constantly dissolving.
His father has transitioned and wants to be called mom (both characters played by Zi'en Cui himself). On her deathbed, she insists on having oral sex with her son. And Xiao Bo fulfills the dying woman's last wish.
His boyfriend has also changed his sex and now goes by the name Nana (Narenqimuge), but Xiao Bo no longer finds her attractive as a woman.
Other acquaintances of Xiao Bo also undergo gender transition as Xiao deals with her loss, and Nana becomes disheartened at the prospect of never finding suitable man.
In this context, a sexual chain reaction occurs that wreaks havoc on the traditional Chinese roles that govern men and women, parents and children.
Presented at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2003, San Sebastián International Film Festival 2011, Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (BAFICI), 2004, Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF), 2003, Jeonju International Film Festival 2002, Ghent Film Festival, 2003 , Frameline: San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival, 2003, the film, produced by Cuizi Film Studio and with a artistic photography by Deqiang Yuan, conveys a sensation of avant-garde cinema and inaugurated a new way of making queer Chinese cinema.
'Chou jue deng chang' ('Enter the Clowns') is a film that says that everything you know or think you know about sexual identity and gender orientation is wrong, that you should rethink everything, while definitively installing Cui Zi En in the international pantheon of queer filmmakers on a global scale.

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