Falling in love is such a universal and yet breathtaking experience that it’s not surprising that filmmakers try to capture it over and over again. For gay viewers, though, finding a romantic comedy in which love outshines the drama of coming out is a rare occasion. But Taiwan’s Formula 17, a buoyant little romance about beautiful young gay men in Taipei, succeeds. While the film isn’t terribly realistic, its fantasy world is one in which I’d be happy to spend more than a couple of hours. When 17-year-old Chou Tien Tsai (Tony Yang) arrives in Taipei toting his red suitcase, he is looking for both his first love and a summer job. Meeting him at Taipei’s bustling Hsimen Station is his online love interest, a gay man named Kevin, who invites him out for a soda.

So Tien takes his red suitcase with him to meet up with his old classmate Yu (King Chin), who is now a bartender at a gay club. Tien’s arrival at the club, with its flashing strobe lights and pulsing dance music, provides one of the most memorable images of the film: the country boy dragging his suitcase across the dancefloor, a fish so far out of the water he’s landed himself in a skyscraper.

Yu is a slight young drama queen with bleached blond tips and a white boyfriend. He is eager to show Tien the ropes, and quickly introduces him to the flamboyant CC, who favors glittering eye shadow, and slightly less flaming Alan, a trainer who helps Tien find a job at his gym. Yu quickly discerns that Tien has not yet used the lucky Japanese condom that he gave him and is still a virgin—a fact that Tien inadvertently announces to the entire club at an inopportune quiet moment.

At that moment, he makes eye contact with the resident playboy, Bai Tieh Nan (Duncan Chow), who raises a glass of whiskey to him in a sexy little smirking toast that turns Tien’s knees to jelly. Although CC warns him that Bai is a love-em-and-leave-em kind of guy, Tien is irresistibly drawn to the successful architect. It doesn’t hurt that he keeps running into Bai at the gym, where Bai asks him to help him turn on the shower (it was temporarily broken).

What Tien’s buddies don’t know is that Bai has been seeking out professional help to break his Brian Kinney habit. Unfortunately, he’s not quite cured yet. After he and Tien tumble into bed together Bai quickly flees the scene, setting the stage for some artful moodiness on the part of Bai, exaggerated heartache for Tien, and playful scheming on the part of their friends.

Formula 17 veers between saccharine romantic comedy and physical farce with gleeful, decidedly queer pleasure. Directed by D.J. Chen, a 24-year-old woman in her first full-length feature, the film is colorful and unapologetic about being queer. At one point Bai and Tien encounter an older man who gives them dating advice, and turns out to be gay himself. In fact, none of the characters in the film are straight, creating a queer Taiwanese wonderland that has never before been seen on the big screen.

The two lead actors, Tony Yang and Duncan Chow, throw themselves into their roles wholeheartedly, and it doesn’t hurt that both of them are easy on the eyes. Yang is known in Taiwan for his work on several soap operas, including Crystal Boys, an adaptation of the gay novel by Taiwanese writer Pai Hsien-yung. Chow, a model-turned-actor from Hong Kong, looks every inch the successful playboy. His Gucci suits are perfectly pressed and his feathered black locks are never out of place.

Formula 17 received much attention in Taiwan because it was the highest grossing Taiwanese fiction film in 2004. It’s also been heralded as a model of the new kinds of film being turned out by “7th grader” Taiwanese filmmakers. In this case, “7th grader” refers to Taiwanese born in the 1980s, seven decades after the Republic of China was founded. These newer films incorporate music video techniques, and Formula 17 certainly includes several MTV-esque montages as the characters undergo heartache or reunion. But Formula 17 also incorporates traditional Chinese elements in a few flashback sequences that call to mind the brash ceremony of Peking opera, complete with clashing cymbals and stylized speech-making.

It’s the film’s disregard for conventional filmmaking and energetic enthusiasm that make Formula 17 a joy to watch. The gang of queer guys supporting Tien in his quest for love are at times cloyingly stereotypical in their behavior, but they are adequately balanced out by low-key, lovable Tien and the reticent but seductive Bai. Formula 17 may not be Oscar-winning drama, but it’s certainly fun to watch, and in its own way, is indeed revolutionary filmmaking.

Formula 17 screens at NewFest the New York LGBT Film Festival, on June 6, 2005; at Frameline29, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, on June 22, 2005; and at Outfest in L.A. on July 8, 2005.