I turn on my computer thinking that Li Xi, the young film director and producer from mainland China, at 27 years old, seven of them dedicated to her profession after enrolling in a degree in Directing at the Beijing Film Academy in 2017, already has his name written within the Chinese and global film universe after creating works such as the short film with a theme of young love "When the fish meet the sea", nominated in 2022 for the Sixth Pingyao Film Festival "A corner of Pingyao".
While I explore the internet to locate the LGBT+ themed series directed by Li Xi that I want to see, I remember that it also won other awards, such as Best Actress and Best Film at the + MADRAS + International Film Festival, Best Film at the Festival Sunbender International Film Festival and Best Film at the Diamond Bell International Film Festival. And even more recent, the success of his original children's dramatic short "The First Grade Under the Lens", from 2023.
I start downloading the first episode of the web series, original, like the rest of his work. "Passing Through the Blue of My Youth", that's what it's called and that's how I like it: download the file to view it when and how many times I want.
"It seems that Li Xi has joined so many other renowned Chinese filmmakers and television directors who have portrayed homosexuality in their films, series and short films, with works such as 'River Knows Fish Heart', 'East Palace, West Palace', 'Spring Fever', 'For Love, We Can', 'Looking for Rohmer', 'Wu Yan – Speechless', 'Shangai Panic', 'Kinematic Theory', 'The Ambiguous Focus', Boss, I Love You, Find You in the Crowd 2, Find You in the Crowd, Find You in the Dream', and many others", they had told me hours before in the Editorial Board, and I wanted to confirm it.
I sit in front of the computer with a steaming cup of coffee and prepare to watch the first four episodes. "Chinese national beauty! Tanmei! Two male protagonists! Two couples of boys in love! The passion and visual talent of the Chinese director were ideal to bring the series to fruition," I jumped for joy in my seat.
There's another reason I'm drawn to 'Blue Canvas of Youthful Days', I think, as I sip a sip of the fiery black liquid: it's one of those Chinese homosexual dramas that have become something more, a sociological phenomenon.
I remember the precedent of 'The Raccoon', the gay film by Tang Shi, starring Weng Hai Bin and Wu Di in 2015, about two young Chinese university students who live in the same student residence and meet through a mistake with a blanket, and after being declared enemies or adversaries they gradually discover a deeper connection that transcends the initial animosity.
Well, I have already settled into my seat, and the images begin to flow. Each episode is more than 27 minutes long, and Xi Li is not in such a hurry as I imagined, she takes her time, from the first scene to the last.
'Blue Canvas of Youthful Days' also evokes in me the Chinese drama film of the romance and yaoi genre 'Nan She Nan Fen' ('Hard to Give Up'), filmed in 2016 by Hisa Ho, an adaptation of the famous novel 'Men's Men's Points'. There is also a painter, Su He, about 30 years old, who is having an affair with the young Er Meng, his model for drawing artistic nudes, while he prepares for an important exhibition in Japan and another in China, with a collection of works with the title "Difficult to abandon" or "Difficult to give up."
He tells me about the romantic relationship that arises between Qi Lu and Qin Xiao. The first is a talented 18-year-old painter in his last year of high school, who comes from a rich family of artists, who is forced to learn to paint since childhood under the controlling influence of his father. The second is Qin Xiao, a village boy, two years older, living in the city and equally an artistic prodigy with paintbrush in hand. He did not enroll in a university degree at the time because he was burdened by family responsibilities and financial difficulties from an early age. Now he is determined to enter a house of higher education.
Despite his poverty, Qin Xiao is cheerful, brave, and optimistic, while Qi Lu is the reserved, quiet, and pessimistic type, due to his mother's absence and his father's abuse. However, there is a transformation in the character since he joins his life with that of Qin Xiao.
The crucial moment of the meeting of the two protagonists occurs around the first 20 minutes of the first episode, which is not much time for what really happens. However, Li Xi manages to make the time barely noticeable, thanks to the use of a beautiful city landscape, intelligent editing and a very effective use of my expectations, that I know what is going to happen but not when. This entire first act is used to introduce me to the two protagonists, but also to tell me where and how the fall in love between them occurs.
With great changes and unexpected turns, I come to know that by rebelling against strict education and a father who beats him, Qi Lu decides to secretly attend Bo Xa Art Studio, to complete his preparation before entering University. There, in the classrooms of the young master painter Liu Ming Yang (Yao Xing Hao), he meets Qin Xiao. Despite starting out as archenemies, the two quickly break the ice and form a bond.
The episodes go by and the series captivates me even more. In a plot twist, I witness that to Qi Lu's surprise, Qin Xiao turns out to be the online artist "Lan" (Blue) that he has been looking for. Feeling unintentionally responsible for a punishment imposed on Qin Xiao, Qi Lu struggles to muster the courage to confess that he has discovered his secret, but does not wish to upset the seemingly irritable Qin Xiao, whose personality seems to be totally different from that of the artist he admire.
Therefore, he chooses to approach Qin Xiao in the hope of becoming friends. As they break the ice and grow closer, Qi Lu and Qin Xiao weave an indestructible bond.
I find it very beautiful that while Qi Lu admits to being in love with Qin Xiao, this boy experiences the process of self-acceptance. So we will see him suffer, walk anguished, as if he had no direction in life and was stumbling, while exploring his feelings and emotions. It seems like he wants to hug and kiss Qi Lu, especially when he realizes that he suffers from physical and psychological abuse from his father, but an invisible power holds him back. Until when? Will the time come when he will spread his wings and fly free?
Music, especially the theme song "We" (我們), by Chinese arranger and composer Yan Er, helps to enhance and recreate this process that can be long, difficult and terrifying when a young person tries to keep their true self hidden from both others. others as well as himself.
Producers Wang Wen Yin and Li Jue Xuan ('Hi! My Mr. Right', 2023), also an actress who plays Sun Xiaorui, the only member of the young cast with experience in front of the cameras, pleasantly surprise me with the excellent music, perfectly combined with the canvases and the laughter of the two boys that I soon begin to hear.
Despite the appearance of various characters throughout the series, Qin Xiao, a role played by Zhang Xuan Yu, and Qi Lu, played by Guo Jia Le, are discovered as full protagonists who symbolize something much more allegorical such as affection, the warmth, the physical attraction of two young people who without realizing it discover their homosexuality.
Both actors get into the skin of their characters and do what only real actors can do: bring a fictional character to life.
The director's skill lies in the fact that she focuses the main plot on the narrative act of the protagonists' discovery and acceptance of their sexual orientation, while they intertwine a beautiful story of friendship in which painting plays a transcendental role. Xi Lin moves me by transmitting the joy and love that the protagonists feel, through subtle resources that are gradually exposed.
I enjoy a feeling of placidity and tenderness through the images, images where the protagonists themselves discover themselves visually small before the greatness of love and pictorial art that surround them.
One of the keys to this transmission of love towards the person who has burst into his life is achieved through the essential performance of Zhang Xuan Yu: saying with his eyes, with his gestures, with his silences, much more than what his express mouth. The actor builds a well-rounded character, full of security expressed through small doses of aggressiveness and tons of tenderness that the character carries in his chest; of a body language that is both rough and tender, very elaborate. He has suffered, but he also knows the love of his grandfather and his friend Tan Yin (Xiao Zi Zhuo), and the kindness of painting teacher.
This actor's role manages to captivate and excite me. The actor manages to give real life to the character by creating a character and personality of his own, something that not many actors achieve. The series has great moments, all of them loaded with moving drama, scenes such as when the character vents his pain against a brick wall at the possibility that his grandfather, with Alzheimer's, has suffered an accident, or when he cannot contain his tears when seeing him safely back after getting lost when leaving home to watch a game of street chess in a nearby park, or how symbolic a photograph taken on a day visiting the zoo can be, great moments starring Zhang Xuan Yu.
Against this, Guo Jia Le plays the role of someone more extroverted and sensitive. I see how he rebels against his father in the television interview after winning an important prize in a painting contest, or when he flees from abuse and finds not only refuge and a place for artistic creation in the classrooms where Qin Xiao studies.
However, although on the surface they are opposites, both have deep inside a great desire for freedom, self-improvement and love that each one is capable of transmitting through their perfect interpretations.
"How is it possible for these rookies to achieve such magnificent and memorable performances?", I ask myself as I pour myself some more coffee from the container in which it is still warm.
"And this other character, Wei Jiayu (Hu Ze Ming), who I thought was the typical abusive and problematic student and then turns out to be a good guy, while he joins forces with the protagonists and falls in love with the also haughty painting student Sun Xiaorui”?, this question arises in my head.
The series, as a corpus, is capable of germinating warm fragments of humanity, in which I discover the most vivid features of the human condition of LGBT+ people.
Its plot, populated by areas of light and shadows, with climate, nerve and dramatic meat, places its emotional core in everyday situations inhabited by real human beings - in all the extension and connotations of the term - who expose their intimate dramas in a very realistic, very natural tessitura, without forcing emotions or managing empathy at all costs through melodramatic underlinings or cheap script blows.
The series, although at a certain point it is not complete and still requires much more rigor in certain areas, deserves all my admiration. There is too much creative talent, dreams, and desire to do involved in its existence, to avoid or undermine it.
To the good character study of 'Blue Canvas of Youthful Days', add its fortunate acting defense. Its story progresses, in part, thanks to the reflections of its creators on very recognizable human conflicts in today's world, and thanks to its performers (it is impossible not to make a special mention here of the histrionic competence of Xiao Zi Zhuo, the actor who plays Qin Xiao's hearing-impaired friend and tenant, and who takes care of Qin Xiao's grandfather when he is in the classrooms at Bo Xa Art Studio, and Yao Xing Hao, who plays painting teacher Liu Ming Yang. These two characters will make up a second couple.
'Blue Canvas of Youthful Days' breathes art from all sides in a literal way. That is why its presentation and farewell cannot be any other way than through the application of the pictorial and photographic universe to cinematographic language in terms of color and shape, sharing a common grammar, fulfilling the requirement of imitating pictorial and iconographic values. to get closer to the artistic.
I turn off the computer thinking about Qin Xiao and Qi Lu. There is both love and pain in her story; It is as tender as it is sad and addictive, as happy as it is heartbreaking and romantic, that I think I will never be able to forget it.
I turn off the computer and my Internet connection. I look forward to the next episodes.
The leftover, untasted coffee has cooled in my hands.