By Cindy Ziyun Huang

For you, perhaps, this is an exciting secret chamber. A cave of wild fun, hidden behind construction site hoardings. For me, however, it’s one of the many shops I would walk by on my way to weekend math courses, to my grandparents’, to a favourite barbeque stall, or to my dentist. Funky Town, an underground queer club in Chengdu, is where Ben Mullinkosson’s The Last Year of Darkness (2023) anchors itself. Following five individuals – Yihao, Gennady, Kimberly, Darkle, and 647 – in and out of a euphoric nightscape, the documentary paints a subtle portrait of the local queer scene.

I think it’s forgivable, given that I spent my entire adolescence roaming Chengdu’s streets, that I’m totally unable to separate the queer underworld depicted in The Last Year of Darkness from the shops, road signs, pedestrian railings, and ginkgo trees I’m too familiar with. However, this intertwining of the queer community’s nocturnal wilderness and the city’s daytime “norm” doesn’t just happen in the heads of soppy audiences who, like myself, are emotionally attached to Chengdu. In the film, the sensational spectacle of queer fugitives’ lives becomes simply a part of the city. We are shuttled between a dance floor where sweaty bodies melt away into strobe lights and the business-as-usual unfolding of everyday life – sometimes a shot of local elderlies playing badminton in a park, sometimes a sequence about getting a second-hand electric bike fixed. During the daytime, the ravers, DJs, and drag performers who flock to Funky Town every night have to manoeuvre through everyday life in the city. They deliver takeaways, practice DJing, fall out with friends, and deal with childhood traumas and suicidal thoughts. Their pains and pleasures are interwoven with the rest of the city.

The relationship between the two worlds is more complicated than simple contrasts. Yes, Funky Town hosts the city’s most outrageous raves for the most subversive people. But the film tells you the club is also just a part of the local landscape, nothing exceptional. Its intoxicated crowd consists of individuals who are just like any other confused and frustrated young people adrift in the city but having fun. Drinking, smoking, having sex, throwing up over and over again.

The protagonists’ stories unfold amid a rapidly changing urban space. Their internal struggles coincide with the city’s belated coming of age. Up to this point, Chengdu has been referred to in China as a “second-tier city”. Unlike “first-tier” metropolises, where metro systems began running as early as the 1970s, Chengdu didn’t have its first metro line until 2010. In the film, this second-tier city undergoes a brutal transformation. Old neighbourhoods are demolished and land is torn open to make way for new properties and infrastructures. In front of Funky Town, heavy construction machines work day and night for a new metro line. Their rhythmic digging and drilling often echo the club’s throbbing music. Shown repeatedly from various angles, the lacerated land in front of the club becomes a visual metaphor for painful growths. However, while the muddy construction site successfully turns into the squeaky-clean metro station seen in the film’s title sequence and final scene, we are left unsure where the protagonists’ desperate search for a way out will take them in the end.

Tension and conflicts arise as the city and its queer community encounter each other and grow intertwined. This is spelt out right at the beginning when the glamourously dressed-up drag performer Yihao gets vexed that no cab driver would pull over for him. Wearing a wedding gown and a fluff-out curly wig, he flips up an angry middle finger as a cab speeds away. After two failed attempts of hailing, with his costume getting too heavy and makeup turning cakey, Yihao finally collapses into the backseat of a cab. He takes a dig at the drivers who refused him: “Neither of them dared to pick me up … What’s the matter? We are all people.” The teasing sarcasm can hardly conceal his disdain and fury.

But the film also homes in on sparks of playful kindness that grow out precisely from the intersection of two drastically different and seemingly irreconcilable worlds. One morning in the film, Funky Town’s worn-out staff members greet the cleaning lady who arrives at dawn to clean up the mess. “Thanks for working so hard, Auntie!” – to which she replied mischievously by complaining in the Chengdu dialect: “It’s so dirty!” As the exhilarating night fades away, the sunrise paints the club’s windows soft pink. At the intersection of day and night, a strange sense of compatibility and empathy that doesn’t necessarily require mutual understanding permeates the tiny world of Funky Town.

Born out of years of Mullinkosson’s immersion in Chengdu’s queer communities, The Last Year of Darkness tries to highlight the connection between its protagonists and the city. Yet, at times I can’t help but feel that it offers only brief insight into how individuals of these communities have made space for themselves. Chengdu is more complicated than a flat backdrop: it’s known for its idle and easygoing atmosphere, as well as the active LGBTQIA+ community that has found acceptance in such non-judgemental openness; but as the city gets regenerated and grows gentrified, the subcultural scene also faces tightening regulations and increasingly repressive silencing. How do local queer individuals negotiate – and collaborate – with their socio-cultural environment? The Last Year of Darkness gives us little idea of what being “queer” actually means in the specific context of a city like this, other than feeling lost, fighting internal battles, suffering from marginalisation, and “suck[ing] a lot of dicks”, to quote Darkle’s impassive declaration.

This generalisation of queer experience becomes most pronounced when it evokes an overused and, dare I say, Western formula of queerness. In a sequence towards the end of the film, David Bowie’s Life on Mars takes over the soundtrack and creates a climax. We watch the protagonists laugh, confess, and dance as the song morphs from a phone audio of poor quality into a majestic howl, which accompanies Yihao’s charismatic performance at Funky Town. Bowie is great, and the sequence does make me a bit emotional, but surely there are more nuanced ways to summarise the toil, fun, hope, hunger, and despair experienced by the Funky Town folks than quoting a deified white British male icon’s song, no?

At one point, Yihao might have suggested another reading of the not-quite-right Bowie song. Removing all his makeup and stripping himself bare, he confronts Mullinkosson’s camera and announces: “Ben, I don’t think your documentary can record me, or anyone’s real life. I think real life is something you need to feel for yourself.” Out of place, the song might be The Last Year of Darkness’s self-reflexive hint at its own futility as a documentary. No matter how hard it tries, it’s never going to fully, accurately, and objectively capture reality. Instead of an obsessive attempt to get it “right”, the film’s sincere and delicate portrayal of the people gathered around Funky Town is simply an invitation for us to feel real life for ourselves.