Matt (Teddy Lee) works in a Chinese restaurant. One night, that what looks like a routine buzz and whirl of the on-site and phone orders takes a strange course. A peculiar customer (Jeff Chan) enters and catches Matt’s attention. The old legend awakens and disturbs the flow of things.
Kiss of the Rabbit God (2019) by Andrew Thomas Huang screens at the Queer East Film Festival.
Drawing from an 18th century poem and of own family history, Huang brings into live a story of self-recognition. Known for phantasmal, surrealist music videos for Björk, Serpentwithfeet, Kelela, FKA Twigs or the sci-fi video series Flesh Nest, he treats the narrative as an essay, accentuating the impression and concept. Rabbit God (or Tu’er Shen) is a Tao patron of forbidden lovers, of queer lovers. In “Kiss of the Rabbit God”, two points in time interweave. The past story of a soldier that fell in love with a government official and was sentenced to death and became Rabbit God, permeates into the present, happening that night at Lucky Dragon.
Soaked in bold vivid colours of dominant red contrasted with cold greens and blues, the film captivates you in its style. It plays with the two time-spaces to make it one. The cacophony of the rush hour at the restaurant contrasts the serenity of the Rabbit God’s “kingdom”. So does the fragmentation of restaurant’s spaces and the integrity of the deity’s plane. Yet both hold a certain intimacy filled with Chinese ornaments and symbols, most dominantly the “shuang xi” – double happiness. The splashes of night neon signs, as well as the elaborate costume and set design add into the sultry visuals of seeping sensuality of the older power. With it, comes curiousness, yearning and passion.
As Huang himself aptly puts it, “Kiss of the Rabbit God is a confession and a love letter to my queer Asian community and tells the story of a lover’s quest for self-possession to own one’s desire and unlock sexual intimacy through spiritual embodiment.” Marrying the style of abstract music videos with an independent-film three-act arc, “Kiss of a Rabbit God” slows down the flow of time in that good way. Without much action, it captivates with mashes of mundane reality, fantasy, and mysticism. It brings a poetic myth into life in a curiosity-inducing way.
