Since May is finally here, it’s time to properly celebrate Asian Heritage Month. Although we should celebrate Asian history all year long, May gives us the opportunity to truly appreciate and highlight some of our favorite moments of Asian achievements. For over a century, as outlined by Variety, Asian cultures, narratives, and people have been constantly misrepresented in Western media and heavily stereotyped. While Asian-American cinema has seen steady growth in the last few years, per The Science Survey, particularly since Crazy Rich Asians broke box office records and made history, there is still a lot of progress to be made in terms of equitable and respectful representation.
Indeed, it’s not often that you see openly LGBTQ+ characters who are Asian on screen. While this might change with the upcoming film Fire Island, which will take a Pride & Prejudice-like story and view it from a queer and Asian lens, you’d be hard-pressed to find many LGBTQ+ Asian characters in movies since the dawn of New Queer Cinema. Here’s a look at our list of Asian / Asian-American movies with LGBTQ+ characters, ranked.
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8 The Half Of It (2020)
Netflix
Directed and written by Alice Wu, The Half Of It is a 2020 coming-of-age Netflix drama released to positive reviews. The plot tells the story of a friendless high school girl named Ellie Chu, who agrees to help give advice to and be the ghostwriter for one of her boy classmate in order to win a girl’s love over, despite Ellie having a crush on her as well. The movie is a heart-warming reminder that we’re gradually starting to get more good representation of queer kids on our screens. It emphasizes that it’s normal to not have it all figured out.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
7 Love of Siam (2007)
Sahamongkol Film International
Released in 2007, Love of Siam is a Thai multi-layered romantic drama, which focuses on the themes of family, friendship, and love. Given the fact that the gay romance wasn’t included in any of the promotional material before the movie was released, it stirred controversy in Thailand. Despite all the fuss, it went on to become a critical success, winning Best Picture at multiple Thai industry awards.If you enjoy friends-to-lovers storylines, this one is for you.
6 Super Deluxe (2019)
YNOT Studios
Super Deluxe is a Tamil hyperlink movie, focusing on four different characters whose fates interconnect as they all go through unexpected situations on the same day. One of the main characters is Shilpa, a transgender woman who returns to her family after abandoning it seven years ago. The character experiences constant police mistreatment as she fights for her family’s acceptance. The movie shows you the meaning of life as well as the blurred lines between good and evil. Critics listed this movie as one of the “Best Tamil Films of 2019”.
5 Happy Together (1997)
Golden Harvest Company
The Hong-Kong romantic drama Happy Together is pretty much well-known as a queer classic. The movie depicts the turbulent romance between Ho Po-Wing (Leslie Cheung) and Lai Yiu-Fai (Tony Leung), who constantly break up and get back together. They travel to Argentina to try mending their relationship. On multiple occasions, since its release, it has ranked as one of the best LGBTQ+ movies of all time. If you decide to give it a watch, let us remind you that Asian queer films are on another level of pain.
4 Fathers (2016)
Lovetitude Production
Do you want to watch a queer movie about fatherhood? We got you. Fathers is a 2016 Thai romantic drama, which tells the story of Phoon and Yuke who have been together for over 13 years when they decide to adopt an abandoned child. They’re a happy family until their child starts attending grade school, and he is made fun of for having no mother. When the Children’s Right Protection Organization gets involved, everything gets messier.
3 Twilight’s Kiss (2019)
New Voice Film Productions
It’s not often that you see older queer people represented in the media, let alone an old Asian queer couple. Twilight’s Kiss or Suk Suk is a critically-acclaimed Hong Kong drama movie, telling the story of Pak and Hoi, two elderly and secretly gay men who, despite building a hetero life for themselves throughout the years, end up falling in love with each other and finding solace in one another in their twilight years. The movie received generally positive reviews.
2 Your Name Engraved Herein (2020)
Sony Pictures
Your Name Engraved Herein has become the highest-grossing LGBTQ+ movie in the history of Taiwan, exceeding NT$100 million at the Taiwanese box office.The plot is set after the martial laws ended in 1980 in Taiwan. A-Han and Birdy are two students who fall in love with each other despite societal and family pressure and ever-present homophobia. The movie is bound to break your heart with some powerful lines. If you want to get a fuller version of the movie, we recommend reading the novelization, which contains many deleted scenes that should have made it into the final cut.
1 The Handmaiden (2016)
CJ Entertainment
The Handmaiden is a critically acclaimed South Korean erotic psychological thriller set in the era of Japanese rule over Korea. The story consists of three different plots that will definitely leave you speechless plot-twist-wise. Nam Sook-hee gets hired as a personal maid for Lady Izumi Hideko in order to con her and steal her fortune, but as the story continues, they end up falling in love with each other and conspiring against others. The underlying themes are more sinister and dangerous than they appear.
