Malaysia's First Film with Gay Lead Characters Breaks Taboo
...Dalam Botol (.. in a Bottle), Malaysia's first feature film with gay lead characters, is causing a stir in the Muslim-majority country, where consensual sodomy is illegal and depictions of homosexuality in pop culture are taboo.
The story in short is about a man that falls in love with another man, after which he a sex-change procedure in a misguided attempt to please his lover. He regrets his decision and moves back to his hometown where he falls in love with a girl.
The film that opened recently has provoked the anger of religious organisations. The youth wing leader of the conservative Pan-Malaysian Islamic party (PAS) called it a "shocking" attempt to promote gay culture.
Malaysia's censorship board advised the film's producer, Malaysian novelist Raja Azmi Raja Sulaiman, to cut a nude scene and drop the word Anu the Malay word for penis from the start of the title. "I don't understand what all of the fuss is about. This is a love story. What I am doing is not wrong," he said
The film will screen in 52 cinemas throughout the country and cost about RM1m (?202,000) to make, which is low-budget by Malaysian standards. It is based on the life of Raja Azmi's friend who regretted having a sex-change procedure. She said: "If my film has a message, it's please don't change yourself for love. My friend has suffered so much, and I don't want other people to suffer like him."
This message has found little resonance with the country's handful of gay activists, who have joined the religious authorities in criticising the film, although for very different reasons. Alex, 28, a financial analyst who blogs anonymously about gay issues and asked that his real name be withheld, said that while the film's groundbreaking depiction of gay characters could be seen as a sign of progress, he worried it would reinforce stereotypes in Malaysian culture. "The ending is very negative. Having the main character regret being gay and falling in love with a woman is not going to help our image problem here," he said.
Malaysia's film censorship rules require gay and transgendered characters to regret their actions and learn from supposed mistakes, guidelines to which Dalam Botol had to conform in order to receive screening permission.
(By Dustin Roasa in Kuala Lumpur)