The film’s producer and scriptwriter, 22-year-old Yang Zhiyuan, says he meant to sow confusion. A long silence follows while Lu and Yang mull over the script. In her mind, Yang’s character, Dongzi, is straight, and Ah Zhen, his maybe-love interest, is bisexual. To Yang, the script seems straightforward: Both characters are unequivocally gay.

“Summer,” a short film project by students at Communication University of China in Beijing, tells the story of two young men working in a noodle shop who develop feelings for each other. “It’s a love story that just happens to be between two young men,” Lu says, sitting on one of the beds in Yang’s hotel room.

BEIJING - It’s the evening before filming starts, but director Lu Zhan and her main actor, Yang Zhenguo, can’t agree on what the script is really trying to say.