With Lan Yu, 1999 Frameline Award winner Stanley Kwan returns to San Francisco to present his most acclaimed work to date. The subtle emotion and rich, quiet beauty of his newest film reach depths rarely seen in contemporary love stories. It is a tale of two men's lives and of a powerful relationship that is strengthened, torn apart, and stretched again and again through a decade of intimacy, chaos, loss, confusion and passion.

The film is based on the hit underground novel Beijing Story. First published on the Internet in 1996, this anonymously written novel was widely circulated in China and created a buzz throughout Chinese-language gay communities around the world. Together with writer Jimmy Ngai, Kwan (who directed 1997's Still Love You After All These and Frameline23 favorite Hold You Tight) turned the story into a screenplay. After a Chinese financial backer came aboard, it was shot quickly and clandestinely in anonymous locations last year.

The story unfolds in Beijing, 1988. Handong (Hu Jun) is a handsome thirtysomething businessman, someone who has known success all his life and now heads a fast-growing international trad­ing company. He's bold, sexy, charming, bright... and gay. Lan Yu (Liu Ye) is a young student. Quiet but street-smart, he has just arrived from a country town to study architecture and, like many students, is always short on cash and always willing to earn some quickly.

Meeting by chance in a bar, Handong picks up Lan Yu for money, taking him home for a night of sex. Neither has a clue as to how this evening will transform their lives. They soon meet again, and Lan Yu begins to comprehend his love for his older friend. But Handong really just wants a playmate, not a lifelong companion. Over the years, they meet, love, separate, reunite and share a lavish home together in a dangerous and tumultuous pattern. At one point, Handong even forces himself into a whirlwind romance with a woman.

One day they wake up to find themselves in serious trouble and facing a potentially dev­ astating future. And then fate, like all of love and life, proves it is forever mysterious.