EAST PALACE WEST PALACE

The public restrooms of a central Beijing park have become a popular meeting place for homosexuals. As a result of a raid, A Lan, a young writer, finds himself at police headquarters, undergoing an interrogation which proceeds strictly by the book. The questioning soon develops into an evocation of A Lan's tumultuous life: his childhood, his parents, school, his first sexual experience, the state-imposed work in the countryside, and then, the gradual drift towards the quest for true love. These brief, intimate glimpses of A Lan's life blur the interrogating officer's feelings for his prisoner, and his initial repulsion turns first into fascination and, finally, to attraction. A strange love story unfolds.