Brando

BLGLFlix editorial view

This is a director with one credit on record, handed a nine episode Cantonese series adapted from a well-known novel, with two actors on the call sheet who between them have well over a hundred films behind them.

We have written elsewhere here about how newer Boys’ Love productions choose their crews. Some borrow veterans, which buys reliability. Some start new people, which buys unpredictability. Ash appears to have done both at once, and split them by department: a first-time director working with a cast that has been on Hong Kong sets for decades.

Our own read is that this is a deliberate arrangement rather than an accident, and a sensible one. Experienced actors need less direction and can carry a scene that is not perfectly blocked. A production that wants a new voice behind the camera can afford one precisely by not taking a second risk in front of it. Whether it worked is a question for the series, not for a credit list.

The wider point is one we keep arriving at. Cantonese-language Boys’ Love barely exists, so nobody in Hong Kong has a Boys’ Love directing career to point at. The only way a Cantonese Boys’ Love series gets made is by someone doing it for the first time.