Formula 17 begins with a sumptuous wet dream. Tien (Tony Yang) is having an impossibly lovely underwater smooch with a long-haired boy when he wakes to soiled shorts. He needs to catch a train for his summer vacation with a high school buddy now a Taipei boys-town bartender. Yu (the wide-eyed, scene-stealing King Chin) introduces him to his bar buddies and to the main shark in the dance-floor love tank, a slick-looking business executive named Bai, who has a nasty reputation for never bedding the same boy twice.
Tien sheepishly confesses to Yu that he's yet to break the seal on the lucky condom that Yu bought for him in Japan. As Tien lets the word "virgin" slip from his yet-to-be-kissed lips, the music stops, and every shark in the tank fixes him with that certain look that welcomes fresh meat. We're off to the races to see if the boy who's never been bedded can snare the guy who never repeats a shag.
Bai (Duncan) is not merely pathologically promiscuous, but he refuses even to kiss, a malady for which he seeks professional help. His doctor gives him a kissing mirror, and when that doesn't do the trick, a life-sized rubber boy-doll with white-boy features. Bai and Tien meet at one of those long traffic lights, and through the intervention of an older male pedestrian, finally exchange cards and prepare for their one night of bliss.
As silly as all this sounds, in the hands of first-time female director D.J. Chen, this bauble plays like a Japanese boy-love comic book — the kind targeted for romance-starved females, with no female characters. With snappy one-liners, Chen and screenwriter Rady Fu demonstrate the Taipei boy network where English and Cantonese start to merge as a new, sex-friendly third language.
Yu demonstrates how he keeps the flame of a long-distance relationship going by saying, "I love you" over the phone to his American boyfriend in as many tongues as possible, including Korean and Japanese. The French "Je t'aime" is the most seductive, when whispered in a slutty Cantonese accent. Tien learns to juggle wolves at his job as a health club towel-boy, learning that the line, "You're cute as shit" means the same thing in any language.
Director Chen demonstrates that, just as Stateside, it's a boy's friends who help him float through long, hot, love-starved summers. And as with Jim Fall's Trick, Formula 17's formula for postponing the inevitable final clinch pays off in an unexpectedly moving finale.
Plays the Castro Theatre Nov. 19-25.