Director: Edward Yang
Year Released: 1991
Rating: 2.5
Si'r (Chang Chen), a Taiwanese teenager growing up in the late 1950's, has difficulties at his new school: the gangs are constantly battling each other, the (shocking!) influence of Elvis Presley is becoming stronger among the populace (beware the Western invasion!) and he has a complicated romance with budding actress Ming (Lisa Yang). I saw a truncated and blurry VHS (!) copy of this in the late nineties and it didn't really strike me as being anything special ... thankfully, Criterion has released the full version and, well, I still don't think it's that fantastic. It's too episodic, its lead character is too inert (it's hard to read his emotions ... he only appears to be able to be sad) and two thirds of the movie is basically the boys fighting with each other ... which grows tiresome. It's probably more important, to me, as a historical timepiece for a culture undergoing a cultural transition (aside from American music and technology like the radio, there's still a lingering influence from Japan) and the resulting ennui than as a moving cinematic wonder ... although Yang does have an fine attention to detail, and the final scene brings the (lengthy) project to a melancholy end.
