Moneyboys (C.B. Yi, Taiwan, 2021

https://notesonfilm1.com/2022/06/22/thinking-aloud-about-film-moneyboys-c-b-yi-taiwan-2021/ Why are we talking about Moneyboys? Well Jose’s recently read The Hustler/ Die Pupenjunge, City of Night, and Dancer from the Dance and is fascinated by gutter and underbelly, night and shadows, criminality and liminality, the ways social and psychic alienation can combine with carnal immersion though sexual connection, the tension in sex work between certain types of freedom and certain types of bondage. Moneyboys is too high class to touch on many of those things. But Richard is interested in Taiwanese Cinema, in Hou Hsiao-hsien and Haneke, interests which do intersect with Money Boys so humours him. In the podcast we talk of the significance of a Taiwanese film on this subject being set in Mainland China; the tensions between the rural and the city; the biological family which accepts money earned from sex work but casts out the worker; the value of constructed families; the various kinds of love valued (and de-valued) by the film; the possible conflation of sex work and homosexuality; the fluid long takes and the emotional distance evoked. It’s an accomplished first film, interestingly made under a pseudonym, and in the podcast we talk through our responses to the various strands it raises.