Confused (SPOILERS)
First of all, the movie was breathtakingly beautiful . But as reviewed above, it was very difficult to follow what really happened.
1) Am I right in assuming that Ricky got Ueli to pose as the dead Pascal to claim a backpack he left 5 years ago (I mean it's obviously Pascal's by the way Ricky hugs it on the way back)? If so why did Ueli have to go to China to give it to him in the end?
Of course, the horrifying conclusion to that is that maybe Ueli is also imagined. And the reason he visited China was in a way to 'take' Ricky's mother (who died as he was waiting for Ricky to come back home from work). Plus his being gay too like Pascal and being in an implied relationship with Ricky while he was in Switzerland seems too good to be true.
Which is... more than I can take LOL. I know it's too much to ask from most gay movies (which almost always kills off one of the protagonists in the really good romantic ones) but at least if Ueli existed then the implied ending is that Ueli did end up with Ricky. And that at least is a semi-happy ending to an extremely sad movie.
2) Also the beginning of the film. The old woman and old man/boy saying goodbye and the story of the man on the bicycle getting lost on the shores of Uri. What was that about? Was that a swiss proverb from somewhere? Was it just there to symbolize death (and possibly rebirth, in the way the old man became a boy again)? Because the entire movie itself seems to be about death. It even covered the part of Ueli's sister playing the violin and crying at the end while Ueli listened from the other side of a stone wall, in what seems to be in memory of their mother (which explains why Ueli always seemed to be trying to sell his mother's things, might be his way of saying goodbye. Something which his sister is not yet ready to do).
But yeah. Awesome film. I really teared up near the ending. The part where Pascal tells Ricky that the milk bottles got broken (in german), tries to wake him up, notices the bird (a part of most asian folklore concerning death), and sees his body outside. Man... the expression on his face when he realizes that he was dead and he was saying goodbye was... heartbreaking.
I just wish there was an official plot somewhere. I could try and piece out the story in a linear timeline by noting their clothing, but it would still leave a lot of blanks.