''Speechless'' () is a 2012 Hong Kong — mainland China film, directed by

Simon Chung Simon Chung Tak-sing (), is a Hong Kong film director. His films include ''Innocent'', released in 2005, ''End of Love'' which premiered at the 59th Berlin International Film Festival in 2009,London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival, formerly known as the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (LLGFF), is the biggest LGBTIQ+ film festival in Europe. It takes place every spring in London, England. It began in 1986, as a season of gay and ...

, on 28 March 2012, and contains brief full-frontal male nudity.

Plot

A man is found naked by the side of a river in Wuhan in mainland China. His name is Luke, but he appears to be unable to speak, and is sent to a local hospital for diagnosis. Unable to determine the cause of Luke's condition, the hospital decides that he must be sent elsewhere. Soon, Luke's nurse, Xiao Jiang, discovers that his superiors have decided to transfer Luke to a mental asylum. He then decides that he must rescue him and smuggle him out to his uncle's village, where they will have to evade capture from the local police. Slowly, the reason for Luke's speechlessness becomes clear. Xiao Jiang discovers that Luke had previously had a romantic affair with a young male university student, called Han Dong, whom he had met at the university campus, together with Han Dong's girlfriend, Xiao Ning. Xiao Jiang accidentally discovers a secret that provides a key to Luke's past, enabling him to subsequently track down Xiao Ning to find out more. Although she proves to be unhelpful and deceitful, he begins to be able to piece together the mystery of Luke's inability to speak. He learns that Luke's romantic relationship with Han Dong had been discovered by Xiao Ning, who is a devout Christian, and had decided to punish her boyfriend by 'outing' him and publicly humiliating him at church. During Xiao Jiang's unravelling of this mystery, Luke suddenly disappears from the accommodation he had secretly shared with Xiao Jiang. As a result, Xiao Jiang asks for the help of a female friend, Lan, to try to locate Luke, and help resolve once and for all the central mystery of Luke's inability to speak.Speechless DVD Review
Publisher: ''EntertainmentFocus.com'' Published: 29 November 2012. Retrieved: 27 April 2014.Simon Chung's SPEECHLESS Comes to DVD Today
Publisher: ''BroadwayWorld.com'' Published: 27 November 2012. Retrieved: 27 April 2014.

Production

''Speechless'' was filmed in secret in mainland China: in the small city of Shantou, on the East coast of Guangdong Province, and in the northern countryside of Guangdong, in Southern China. The university campus scene, introducing one of the film's most important characters, Han Dong, and his girlfriend, Xiao Ning, was filmed at

Shantou University Shantou University (; abbreviated STU), a key comprehensive university under the provincial Project 211 program in Guangdong, was founded in 1981 with the approval of the State Council. It is the only public university that receives funding fro ...

. The man playing the role of Han Dong is mainland China model, actor and magician Jian Jiang, who is from

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...

, while the woman playing his girlfriend, Xiao Ning, is Indonesian-born and Australian-educated actress Yung Yung Yu. Both of the main actors, Pierre-Matthieu Vital and Qilun Gao, are indirect friends of the film's director, Simon Chung. Vital, who plays Luke, is from France, but lives and works in Guangzhou and regularly visits Hong Kong, where he first met Simon Chung. Vital is not a fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese, and so Chung had to help train him to speak his lines.FilmOut: Q&A with Simon Chung, director of "Speechless"
Publisher: ''San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.com''. Published: 28 May 2012. Retrieved: 27 April 2014. The actor playing Vital's attentive nurse, Xiao Jiang, is Beijing actor Qilun Gao, who had previously appeared in another Hong Kong film. As filming in China was unofficial, the film was unable to secure a theatrical release in its country of production, although it has been screened once in China, to students at Shantou University, and released in cinemas across Hong Kong. Chung says he wanted his film to explore both a Western perspective of China as well as a Chinese perspective of the West. The inspiration for the film came from a real-life case known as the "Piano Man," in which a man washed up off the eastern coast of England several years ago.

Cast

*Pierre-Matthieu Vital ... Luke *Qilun Gao ... Xiao Jiang *Jian Jiang ... Han Dong *Yung Yung Yu ... Xiao Ning *Yu Ting Si Tu ... Lan *Shu Ling Lang ... Xiao Jiang's mother *Shao Qiu Shen ... Dr. Lin *Hua Li ... Church's caretaker

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Speechless 2012 drama films 2012 LGBT-related films 2012 films Chinese independent films Chinese-language films Chinese LGBT-related films Films about race and ethnicity Films directed by Simon Chung Films set in China Hong Kong independent films Hong Kong LGBT-related films Chinese drama films Hong Kong drama films Gay-related films 2010s Mandarin-language films 2010s Hong Kong films

Plot

Production

Cast

See also

References

External links