Well in all honesty, this film by director/writer Scud really leaves a lot to be desired. I like gratuitous full-frontal nudity as much as the next homo but the two leads’ physiques cannot carry the entire movie. The voice-over narrative is overly wordy rather than “deep”, the acting is non-existent with confused accents (most notably Jackie Chow as an Israeli), with lines delivered so flatly that you could land a plane on them.

This semi-autobiographical film revolving around IT Professional Ivan (Sean Li) and his quest of finding love in the arms of a straight friend, Windson (Osman Hung), is long and tries to cover so many areas about love, death, relationships, bonding and family that none of them are successfully realised. Permanent Residence is shot in Hong Kong, Japan, Israel and Australia but with such richly diverse countries and cultures the cinematography could have been much more distinct and given the two leads are obviously fit, the dialogue could have been cut and the visuals increased to make for a more intensely visual and emotional film.

The better scenes are those within Ivan’s apartment with the balance of dialogue between unguarded Ivan and reserved Windson. Although able to be themselves out of the prying eyes or ears of others, Windson is held back by the confines of the social background of living with his family in sheltered housing and with a girlfriend expecting marriage. Ivan, although initially brought up by his grandmother, and with little involvement from neither father nor mother, has worked hard as a loner to enable a self sufficient and easy lifestyle with an apartment of his own. These tender moments do offer some quality acting that isn’t obvious in the rest of the movie.

The subject of gay/straight relationships between men is almost a saving grace as the portrayal of the relationship between Ivan and Windson is quite honourably executed with Windson (the straight guy) allowing Ivan to top him (oh yes boys) and allowing this intimacy because he does render strong feelings for his soul-mate. The film extends a little too long and there is such a miss-mash of topics trying to be covered that you don’t truly understand half of the messages the movie is trying to send.

The heavier topics of life and death and life after death are just not translated well to the screen and are so wordy and visually confusing that I believe Scud should have penned this as a book rather than a script to allow time for the reader to digest the weight of his views. In fact as a novel, this may have had the opportunity to pay credit the autobiographical side of this semi-autobiographical movie and also give the time needed to cover the span of years the story requires.

The last scenes of Permanent Residence take place in the future and fail to convince us the mise-en-scene is severely lacking. I hope Scud’s next production doesn’t rely so heavily on gratuitous full frontal nudity to get viewers in seats as his previous movie, City Without Baseball also concentrated more screen time on nude shower scenes than on the pitch. Let’s hope Scud can evolve to direct a gay movie that tugs at the heartstrings, visually stimulates and keeps with his relevant depiction of the modern day homosexual some time in the not too distant future.