A Lie at 24 Frames Per Second

Zheng Guanyu first met budding young actor Ming Zheng on the island Nongdao, Yunnan, when he was making a cameo appearance in a film.

It may be said that it was love at first sight.

Over the course of the filming, Zheng Guanyu learnt a lot about him—he was well-skilled in martial arts; he was of mixed-blood and belonged to an ethnic minority group; he lived in the mountains near the set in Nongdao; he chewed on bitter round olives with a straight face…

But there was still so much about him that was unbeknownst to Zheng Guanyu, who had already fallen hard for the clueless man one year his junior, and before he knew it, it was already time for him to leave the island.

Things got awkward between them after Zheng Guanyu’s failed ‘confession’. A year later, just as Zheng Guanyu was starting to think that he’d already gotten over him, they met again at a director’s party, where Zheng Guanyu found out something shocking about Ming Zheng. He then tried again hard to forget him thereafter, but as fate would have it, their paths kept crossing, as if a dog-blood plotline in a melodramatic art film—

They were required to act together…as the main male leads in a hotly-anticipated boys’ love art film.

— 🎥 🎥 🎥 —

Film director Jean-Luc Godard once said, “The cinema is a truth at 24 frames per second.”

But in his eyes, to love is to be trapped.

Till this day, the sunshower from times past still entraps him whole.

“The cinema is a lie at 24 frames per second.”

When straightforward and openly gay older shou meets shy and straight but secretly passionate younger gong, it’s the former who does the chasing first.

But who does the falling?

This is a warning that this is not a saccharine love story between two idols—it’s a genuine story between two genuine actors, as bitter as round olives, but also, as sweet as round olives.

This is a drama within a drama.