The personal, familial, and economic pressures of gay sex work in Beijing is explored with a delicate hand in the visually intoxicating but sometimes frustratingly opaque Moneyboys. Nonetheless, this is still an intriguing and confident debut by first time Taiwanese-Austrian director C.B. Yi and suggests that he has a promising future.
This quietly emotional drama is centred around Fei, sympathetically played by Kai Ko, a young man from a rural village in China working as a gay prostitute in the big smoke and sending his earnings back to his family. Yi was interested in researching the phenomenon of this growing gig economy — of young men leaving the conservatism of the countryside to pursue prostitution. The film has had a long gestation period; originally intended to be a hybrid of documentary and fiction, production was finally moved to neighbouring Taiwan due to production restrictions in China, but the narrative is still informed by the personal stories from real life rent boys that the director met during his research.
We first meet Fei during an extended prologue depicting his early initiation into the world of being a gay hustler, the setting a threesome with fellow moneyboy and boyfriend Xialaio (JC Lin). Initially a seemingly glossy and seductive lifestyle of transactional sex, designer clothing, and karaoke bars, Fei is left beaten and bruised by a client, with Xialaio seeking retaliation with disastrous consequences, forcing him to leave the city. The story then moves forward to five years later, and Fei is now a veteran prostitute with a stylish apartment who has surrounded himself with an extended family of male sex workers.
The most compelling segment of the film and the point where the multilayered themes come into sharp focus arises when Fei has to return back to the village to visit his ailing grandfather. It becomes increasingly clear that his family, which is governed by an imposing patriarchal structure, views Fei’s chosen profession as a dishonourable pursuit even though they have continued to benefit from his financial support. The director moved from China to Austria when he was a teenager, so it is unsurprising that Moneyboys is, in many ways, a story fixated on migration more so than the intricacies of sex work: the exchanges, tensions, and divergent attitudes that arise between rural and urban spaces with the former steeped in ideas of honour and tradition and the latter as the unforgiving epicentre of capitalism.
The homophobic attitudes and a lack of acceptance means that there is an unshakeable sadness that clings to Fei. When he returns back to the hustle of the city, matters are further complicated as he is followed by another villager, Long (Bai Lufan), an impressionable young man looking to make a way for himself in this unforgiving world. Fei, in a clever role reversal of his earlier relationship, is now the experienced elder and takes the eager Long under his tutelage, and the two men become emotionally entangled.
It is no surprise that the director studied under Michael Haneke at film school. The film employs the same vigorously composed, formal elegance of the Austrian auteur with long, uncompromisingly static takes which, while strikingly composed, mean the characters sometimes stay at a chilly remove. When the camera does move it is almost a relief; but the stifling style means that this remains a hermetically sealed and distanced world.
Moneyboys is a delicately probing character study with a tone that is non-judgemental, melancholic and compassionate to its subject matter, but this may have been a richer and more forensic work as a documentary. It would be interesting to delve deeper into the patriarchal structures, toxic masculinity and the psychology of the men (the majority of whom are outwardly heterosexual) who procure the services of male sex workers. However, there is something universally moving about Fei’s personal struggle to leave his home to better himself and support his family while trying to seek acceptance that is not readily available to him.
