Set in a frigid, stagnant town in northeastern China, Bel Ami follows a middle-aged man who comes out as gay and a lesbian couple searching for a gay man to marry so they can have a child together. Director Jun Geng frames these overlapping queer lives as absurdist comedy, with the ghost of communist ideology hovering over characters trying to live honestly in a society that never quite thawed. The Progressive label fits because the film places LGBTQ identity and chosen family at its center, treats these arrangements with empathy rather than spectacle, and positions personal freedom against both lingering collective dogma and conservative family pressure. The comedy softens the politics without defusing them.