A Brighter Summer Day

(Guling jie shaonian sharen shijian, Taiwan 1991, Edward Yang, 237 min., DCP, Mandarin, Min Nan, and Shangainese with English subtitles)

Director Edward Yang, a vanguard member of the Taiwan New Cinema movement, took five years to make this drama of youth in crisis, his only period film. Beginning in 1959, at a time when millions of Mainland Chinese had fled to Taiwan to escape persecution, their children are being brought up in an uneasy atmosphere created by the parents' own uncertainty about the future. One such youth is Si’r (Chang Chen), the 14-year-old son of a career government worker. Si’r is caught between two worlds on multiple sides when he fails out of prestigious day school forcing him to attend night school where delinquency and gang violence are more prevalent. There are two gangs that occupy Si’r’s neighborhood and he does not belong to either, though he does meet and befriend the girlfriend of one of the leaders. Meanwhile, the lax security at the film studio next to the school allows Si’r and his friend Cat (Wong Chi-zan) to watch the production and dream of possibilities. As Si’r struggles with expectations, both internal and external, tensions rise as a typhoon threatens to ravage the island and Si’r’s father is arrested for potential connection to the Communist party. Set in the 1960s, the film recalls films such as Goodfellas, The Outsiders, and Rumble Fish as much as it does the New Cinema’s observational aesthetic.