Permanent Residence

Ivan, a handsome and brilliant IT guy, is coming to terms with his identity and sexuality in Scud’s sophomore feature, Permanent Residence.

Ivan meets Windson at the gym, a man so beautiful and athletic he must be a fantasy. They strike a queer friendship, spending their time together, sparring, travelling, going to beaches and having all sorts of manly fun wearing nothing but Adam’s robes. There is only one catch. Windson is straight and draws a strict boundary when it comes to sex, and so Ivan’s odyssey begins.

Scud draws on his own personal experiences to continue to challenge the usual image of queer men in Hong Kong cinema. Promoting camp to higher art, Permanent Residence continues to showcase the Asian male body so ostentatiously celebrated in City Without Baseball (2007). This film marks one of two collaborations with the Hong Kong legend Herman Yau as cinematographer and the beginning of Scud’s gusto for self-referentiality, a detail which fortifies the fictional world Scud has built for his protagonists. A world where beautiful fantasies become reality, but one that has no immunity from pain or heartbreak, provoking contemplations of life, love, death and belonging.

– kijA