The Last Year of Dark­ness review – a wild ride through Chengdu’s queer scene

It is obvi­ous from the first frame of direc­tor Ben Mullinkosson’s doc­u­men­tary about the under­ground queer club Funky Town in Cheng­du, Chi­na that the film­mak­er has a deep affec­tion for the pun­ters who fre­quent this glo­ri­ous­ly alive dive bar. They are indeed all friends with the US film­mak­er who first vis­it­ed Chi­na in 2011 and returned in 2017 to shoot this fas­ci­nat­ing snap­shot of 20-some­thing self-dis­cov­ery, booz­ing, tantrums, vom­it (so much vom­it!) and the rapid­ly chang­ing face of the city over the course of five years. The club itself sits behind a con­struc­tion site, hid­den away and soon to be shut due to the devel­op­ment of a metro station.

Smoky, neon-lit inte­ri­ors of heady nights out, destruc­tive behav­iour, romance and par­ty­ing till the break of dawn are inter­laced with the cold, harsh real­i­ty of dai­ly life chan­nelled via con­fronting inter­views with the club kids. Mullinkos­son employs a fly-on-the-wall approach while also using artis­tic licence with some semi-con­struct­ed scenes sim­i­lar to the Ross brothers’s meta-doc, Bloody Nose, Emp­ty Pock­ets. Films about queer sub­cul­tures such as Paris is Burn­ing and Pier Kids come to mind while watch­ing, but the way in which the doc­u­men­tary is craft­ed has the same sen­si­bil­i­ty as a joy­ous­ly evoca­tive com­ing-of-age fic­tion­al hang­out movie with added tech­no beats.

The film is ded­i­cat­ed to the peo­ple we meet in the club. We first become acquaint­ed with a tal­ent­ed drag queen on the way to their first live per­for­mance. They are also bat­tling some demons regard­ing their health and child­hood as is anoth­er young woman we meet who is strug­gling with self-esteem and men­tal health issues. Her boyfriend bears the brunt of her drunk­en rage and inse­cu­ri­ties. Join­ing them are a skater boy who is try­ing to make ends meet as a dis­as­trous­ly clum­sy food deliv­ery dri­ver, a curi­ous Russ­ian DJ search­ing for con­nec­tion and a proud­ly gay Chi­nese DJ who is just grate­ful to have, ​“sucked so many dicks!”

Pain, plea­sure, the des­per­ate urgency to express your­self and the sin­cer­i­ty of youth coa­lesce to elec­tri­fy­ing ends. Mullinkos­son cel­e­brates the pre­cious­ness of this com­mu­ni­ty gath­er­ing togeth­er and in turn the beau­ty of friend­ship by pre­sent­ing it in all its messy glo­ry. He also gives his sub­jects room to reflect on their actions in qui­eter moments. His out­sider per­spec­tive on Chi­na is nice­ly bal­anced with his insid­er knowl­edge of the gay scene. Shots of the big­ger pic­ture out­side of the club with daunt­ing­ly large cranes, build­ings and boats encroach­ing on human­i­ty and nature are impos­ing­ly filmed.

What­ev­er your age, if you’re in the thick of it right now or look­ing back in hor­ror at the relat­able bad behav­iour that you’d like to for­get, it’s dif­fi­cult not to fall in love with the peo­ple at the beat­ing heart of this cap­ti­vat­ing doc­u­men­tary. Mullinkosson’s warm and humor­ous approach to the explo­ration of being a young con­fused human while deal­ing with an oppres­sive soci­ety pro­vides a com­fort­ing reminder of how spe­cial safe spaces such as Funky Town can be for a short while even if it doesn’t pro­vide a panacea for all life’s problems.