TAIPEI, Taiwan — When producer Wang Zijian was making the movie “Bel Ami,” or “Beautiful Friends,” he knew it had no chance of airing in Chinese theaters.
The black-and-white satire, set in a small, snowy Chinese town, details the intersecting lives of gay couples, a topic that faces strict censorship under China’s authoritarian leaders.
Wang thought it was unlikely to find welcome in Hong Kong either, as the Chinese Communist Party has been tightening control over the former British colony.
So like a growing number of Chinese filmmakers concerned about censorship, he turned to his last chance to reach a Chinese-speaking audience: Taiwan.
The movie “Bel Ami,” or “Beautiful Friends, a black-and-white satire set in a small, snowy Chinese town, details the intersecting lives of gay couples, a topic that faces strict censorship under China’s authoritarian leaders.
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(Blackfin Production)
“For us, this is the only remaining market,” said Wang, a 36-year-old film producer living in Beijing.
Last year he submitted his movie to Taiwan’s most prestigious film festival, the Golden Horse Awards, in hopes that it would lead to a commercial release.
That decision carried its own risks. The Chinese censors have been increasing pressure on filmmakers, including those who try to circumvent the government by taking their work abroad. As restrictions increase over depictions of sensitive topics, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, filmmakers who disregard requirements for official approval face threats of repercussions to their lives and work.
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Chinese authorities are especially sensitive about Taiwan, an island democracy that China claims as its territory and has vowed to take by force one day if necessary.
In 2019, China began ordering its filmmakers not to enter the Golden Horse Awards festival after one winner expressed support for Taiwanese independence.
For its part, Taiwan limits the number of Chinese movies shown each year in theaters to 10 — selected at random from about 50 submissions. The restriction dates to the 1990s, when China and Taiwan slowly opened cultural exchanges.
For the movie “Bel Ami,” producer Wang Zijian turned to his last chance to reach a Chinese-speaking audience: Taiwan.
(Blackfin Production)
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Exceptions are made for films that win big awards at major film festivals. In November, Wang’s movie, which was filmed in China, won Golden Horse Awards for acting, cinematography and editing, but those accolades were considered too minor to qualify it for commercial release.
This month, Wang and others released a petition asking for Taiwan to relax the rules and grant more exemptions for award-winning films — including his “Bel Ami.”
It also argues that “Bel Ami” — which was funded and produced by a French company — should be considered an international film. But Taiwan considers it a Chinese film, because more than half the main cast is Chinese.
Since 2017, when China started requiring feature films to obtain approval from authorities for screenings at home and overseas, increasing numbers of Chinese filmmakers have been teaming up with foreigners in attempts to skirt the new rules.
“Nobody knows whether a film will be OK,” said Sabrina Qiong Yu, a professor of film and Chinese studies at Newcastle University in England. “Those regulations are more there to encourage self-censorship than to actually censor you.”
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The new restrictions also exacerbated a decline in independent film festivals in China, dampening opportunities for filmmakers outside the official system — and causing more to look abroad.
“Censorship has always been there,” Yu said. “But when it became more and more harsh, lots of filmmakers started to see Taiwan as one of the best places to showcase their work.”
A total of 276 films from China were submitted to the Taiwan festival last year — the most since 2018, the year before China began its boycott.
The award for best narrative film went to “An Unfinished Film,” a Chinese movie about a film crew caught in quarantine during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The award for best narrative film at a Taiwanese film festival last year went to “An Unfinished Film,” a Chinese movie about a film crew caught in quarantine during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Hooray Films)
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It also won for best director. Lou Ye was well aware of the punishments Chinese filmmakers could face if they defied the government, having been temporarily banned from working for broaching sensitive topics, such as LGBTQ+ communities and pro-democracy protests, and submitting his work to international festivals without authorization.
But the recent awards won him a commercial release in Taiwan. It is unclear whether Lou faced repercussions for last year’s winning submission. Through the movie’s distributor, he declined a request for an interview.
Wang said he and Geng Jun, the director of “Bel Ami,” have faced harassment by Chinese authorities for submitting their film to the Golden Horse Awards, but declined to give details.
“The authorities’ approach has always been to impose punishments in a way that leaves no trace,” he said. “As soon as they feel their rationality isn’t working, they resort to using their power to threaten you.”
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The Taiwan festival has a reputation for recognizing Asian movies that face bans at home, including “Revolution of Our Times,” a 2021 Hong Kong documentary about the pro-democracy protests there and “The Story of Southern Islet,” a 2020 Malaysian film whose director refused to cut out scenes of traditional folklore and supernatural beliefs.
But Chinese films probably will face greater scrutiny as cross-strait tensions have deteriorated.
Wonder Weng, executive director of the Taiwan Film Critics Society, has long advocated abolishing the quota on Chinese films. However, the effort has gained little traction, in large part because Taiwanese society is less interested in movies from mainland China.
While film enthusiasts and professionals have promoted independent Chinese productions, Weng said, a subset of Taiwan vehemently opposes any Chinese content, which is sometimes viewed as Communist Party propaganda.
“Even though most people are aware that these regulations are unreasonable, they don’t pay much attention to the issue,” he said.
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In response to questions from The Times, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture said that it will continue to assess the necessity of the restrictions but that festival screenings, the lottery system and the awards exemptions ensure that Chinese films can be seen in Taiwan.
In any case, Taiwan, with a population of 23 million, offers much slimmer financial prospects than China, which has 1.4 billion people.
“Basically 99% of Chinese films released in Taiwan perform terribly at the box office,” said Sun Tseng-han, founder of Hooray Films, which worked on Taiwan distribution plans for “An Unfinished Film, ” which has screened only at festivals so far. “But I really liked it myself, so I wanted to see if it had a chance here.”
As for Wang, the “Bel Ami” producer said he had considered submitting his work to the Taiwan festival in 2020 and 2021 but was too afraid that would provoke trouble with authorities.
This time, he felt he had less to lose.
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Wang Zijian, a producer living in Beijing, said he faced harassment from Chinese authorities for submitting the film “Bel Ami” to a Taiwanese film festival. But, he said: “For us, this is the only remaining market.”
(Blackfin Production)
He said that deepening censorship has ruined China’s film industry, turning the country into a place where “everyone makes what the government wants to see.”
Like many Chinese independent films, “Bel Ami” got no reviews on China’s heavily managed internet.
But on the night of the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, Wang heard from friends back home in China that Chinese social media had become a battleground between commenters celebrating the Chinese entries and the internet censors taking down their posts.
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By 4 a.m., the censors had won.
But Wang was satisfied that his film had at least generated some discussion inside China.
Taiwan, he said, is the “last place of hope for Chinese-language cinema.”
“I want to take care of you,” coos Jessica Chastain’s wealthy American in Michel Franco’s latest film, Dreams, playing in competition at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival.
It is another sparse, clinical work from the Mexican-born Franco, who last gave us 2023’s sublime Memory – which co-starred Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard.
In his new film – which will leave you dazed and disquieted, and is likely to rattle around your head for days after watching it – Chastain headlines as Jennifer, a San Francisco socialite whose father’s foundation has been funding arts initiatives in Mexico City.
There she met Fernando (Isaac Hernández), a dancer working for the foundation – although we only learn this in flashback.
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The film begins as Fernando – who was deported from the United States in 2013 – crosses from Mexico into the US in a truck filled with other illegal immigrants.
Dreams director Michel Franco addresses fraught US-Mexico relations in his new film. Photo: Teorema
Our love of Stephen Sondheim is approaching the “Beatlemania” phase.
One wonders what the Broadway maestro would have made of “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends,” which opened Thursday at the Ahmanson Theatre in preparation for its move to Broadway in the spring. A greatest-hits revue, devised by producer Cameron Mackintosh, the celebratory show is a true embarrassment of riches.
Mackintosh has spared no expense on an extravaganza that seems to have everything but a good editor.
Sondheim, who died in 2021, admitted to me in a 2010 interview that he found these birthday concerts and tribute shows “thrilling and embarrassing.”
“There’s an up- and downside to being venerated,” he said. “You start to believe your own notices, and that’s very dangerous. At the same time, it does feel like it’s gold-watch time. It’s ‘Thanks so much for coming to the party.’ They’re nails in the coffin, is what they are.”
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Well, there’s no longer any worry about how all this public fanfare will affect his creativity. But could all this ballyhoo sap interest in his work? It would be an irony worthy of Sondheim if, after a lifetime of being dismissed as too highbrow, his posthumous career suffered from commercial overexposure.
Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga in Stephen Sondheim’s “Old Friends.”
(Matthew Murphy)
Lea Salonga, who headlines “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” alongside fellow Tony winner Bernadette Peters, is the brightest star of a production overloaded with majestic singing talent. There’s a purity to Salonga’s lyric soprano, which fills the Ahmanson with the distinctive glow not just of the song she happens to be singing but of the musical from which it derives.
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In “Loving You” from “Passion,” a medley from “Sweeney Todd,” “Somewhere” from “West Side Story” and most unforgettably, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from “Gypsy,” Salonga allows us to momentarily inhabit the space of each show, intuitively conveying what I can only describe as the spiritual architecture of these musical landmarks.
The format of moving from one number to the next in TikTok fashion encourages some of the performers to overplay their hands. There’s a little too much mugging, italicizing and elbow-nudging, as if we might not be able to enjoy Sondheim’s unsparing wit on our own.
Salonga, however, is a model of restraint, allowing the lyrics to speak through her careful attention to Sondheim’s scores. Matthew Bourne seems to have lavished all his genius as a director on the elegant musical staging, leaving the actors to their own devices. But Salonga proves that less is indeed more when backed by trust in the material and guided by the artistic precision of a naturally gifted wonder.
Jacob Dickey and Bernadette Peters perform “Hello, Little Girl” in Stephen Sondheim’s “Old Friends.”
(Matthew Murphy)
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Peters wasn’t in strong voice at the opening-night performance, and I wondered if she might be struggling with a cold. When she came out at the top of the show with Salonga, the two elegantly decked in the deep red of a Broadway stage curtain, the connection with the audience was instantaneous. The ovation that erupted threatened to derail the show.
Part of the original Broadway casts of “Sunday in the Park With George” and “Into the Woods,” Peters is one of the great Sondheim interpreters. (I still rank her performance in “Gypsy” up there with the best.) There’s no one like this kewpie triple threat, and even at half-mast she was able to summon some of the old magic.
“Into the Woods” occasioned Peters’ best work, including a duet with Salonga of “Children Will Listen” and a coup de théâtre involving Little Red Riding Hood’s costume. A clumsily set-up “Broadway Baby” from “Follies,” in which Peters cheekily name-checks herself, eventually was redeemed when she was joined by other veteran troupers in leggy kick-line.
“Old Friends,” which was originally produced in London by Mackintosh, has a title that shouldn’t be taken too literally. The company brings together different generations united by their devotion to Sondheim. But the more seasoned pros get two of the biggest showstoppers. Beth Leavel delivers a defiantly louche rendition of “The Ladies Who Lunch” from “Company” and Bonnie Langford leaves it all out on the stage in a gorgeously guttural “I’m Still Here” from “Follies.”
The banquet of beautiful singing is too abundant for a complete inventory. But Jeremy Secomb and Jacob Dickey’s exquisite rendition of “Pretty Women,” a lilting melody amid the murderous machinations of “Sweeney Todd,” deserves special commendation. Jason Pennycooke makes a memorable impression in “Live Alone and Like It,” a song Sondheim wrote for the film “Dick Tracy” that was the only one I didn’t know all the lyrics to.
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There were a few disappointments along the way. Peters had only intermittent success with “Send in the Clowns” from “A Little Night Music” and “Losing My Mind” from “Follies.” Her flickers of brilliance fell short of a flame.
Beth Leavel, Bernadette Peters, Joanna Riding perform “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” in Stephen Sondheim’s “Old Friends.”
(Matthew Murphy)
Mackintosh, who made his greatest-hits selection favoring those shows he had a hand in producing, goes heavy on the comic numbers. The second act begins to drag with slapdash vaudeville showcases that seem like sops to the performers.
Sondheim always insisted that his book writers be given equal due. Songwriting for him was an act of collaborative playwriting. His harping on this point could come across as doctrinaire. But as “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” unwittingly betrays, songs taken out of their context don’t have the same power as when dramatically embedded.
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Mackintosh and Bourne mitigate the damage by grouping some songs together and presenting them in an ingeniously suggestive dramatic fashion. Matt Kinley’s shapeshifting scenic design, combined with Warren Letton’s hypnotic lighting and Jill Parker’s swank costumes, allow scenes to emerge like an impresario’s dreamscapes.
The irreplaceable Barbara Cook put her interpretive stamp on Sondheim’s songbook in her concert tributes, reanimating musical treasures through her own introspective moonlight. The cast of “Old Friends” is too numerous for that level of personal intimacy, so we’re left in a kind of limbo that’s neither cabaret nor full-scale revival.
But in addition to Salonga’s radiant example, there are group numbers that bring us closer to the sublime heights that Sondheim reached. “Sunday,” the culminating hymn of “Sunday in the Park With George,” closes Act 1 to magisterial effect. And “Being Alive” from “Company,” led by Dickey with soaring vocal accompaniment, takes us into the production’s rousing final stretch.
There are glimpses of Sondheim onscreen, but this isn’t another biographical show. It’s an overstuffed yet always stylish homage. While no substitute for the musicals themselves, the production will be cherished by those fans who need to worship regularly at the altar of their Broadway god.
‘Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends’
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Where: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Avenue, L.A.
When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 9.
Renée Zellweger in a scene from ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’
| Photo Credit: JAY MAIDMENT
One thing Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, taught me was that some clothes were indestructible. Bridget’s (Renée Zellweger) closet still has the red, printed pyjamas, the see-through top and granny underwear from the first movie, Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001). You could say yay for Bridget’s environmental consciousness while wondering about hygiene.
Though director Michael Morris and Zellweger said they have carefully introduced the callbacks to the earlier movie so that it appears organic to the story, that does not seem to be the case. Scenes and bits of dialogue and characters have been bunged in willy-nilly, usually dragging one out of the movie.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (English)
Director: Michael Morris
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Leo Woodall, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant
Runtime: 125 minutes
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Storyline: Four years after Mark Darcy’s death, Bridget plunges once more into the world of dating
Among all these hit-and-miss callbacks, is one that is hugely welcome — Bridget’s former boss and lover, the roguishly charming Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant). The movie starts with Daniel listening to a beauteous Geminita (Elena Rivers) spouting rather alarming poetry when Bridget calls. His conversation on the phone while explaining to the disapproving crowd that it is his mum on the line, is hilarious and undiluted Daniel.
It is four years since the death of her beloved husband, human rights lawyer, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) in Sudan. Bridget is now a 50-something single mother with two children, Billy (Casper Knopf) and Mabel (Mila Jankovic). Bridget is encouraged by her family and friends, including Shazzer (Sally Phillips), Jude (Shirley Henderson) and Tom (James Callis) to start dating again. Daniel is now a family friend called upon to babysit Billy and Mabel.
Bridget’s adventures in dating in the time of dating apps are mildly amusing and being a single parent in the face of terrifyingly efficient tiger mums is somewhat amusing. This time around the beautiful toy boy Roxster (Leo Woodall) and the gruff science teacher Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor) form the two sides of Bridget’s love triangle. There is a Christmas concert, a heartfelt song, camping and conversations over blue drinks with friends.
Hugh Grant, left, and Renée Zellweger in a scene from ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’
| Photo Credit:
UNIVERSAL PICTURES
Bridget suffers a double dose of grief as her father, Colin (Jim Broadbent) is no more. Her mum, Pamela (Gemma Jones) lives in a care home with her best friend, Una (Celia Imrie) and still calls Bridget at inopportune moments. Bridget returns to work at the television studio where her former boss, Richard Finch (Neil Pearson) makes her feel welcome.
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Based on Helen Fielding’s 2013 novel of the same name, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy does not have the warmth, wit, energy or singular vocabulary of the first movie. All the cast seems just that one beat out of step, which ends up in a disjointed movie experience. Nothing, including Wallaker’s switch from grumpy science teacher to hopeless romantic, feels organic. And just in case one did not get all the callbacks, the end credits feature stills from the first movie. It is only the scenes with Grant’s Daniel that sparkle, and those are the ones that help us overlook the shortcomings of the rest of the movie.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is currently running in theatres