Eternal Summer

Movie Review: Eternal Summer (2006) By Ken Lee

This movie was a box office success in its native Taiwan when it was released late last year, garnering 4 nominations in Taiwan's Golden Horse Award along the way, and an eventual win for one of its male leads (Bryant CHANG Jui-chia, or ZHANG Ruijia in pinyin, who plays Jonathan KANG Zhenxing in a nuanced performance repletes with all the requisite repressed troubled mood), though a nod for its other male lead (Joseph CHANG Hsiao-chuan, or ZHANG Xiaoquan in pinyin, who plays the other-worldly Shane YU Souheng with tremendous vigour and enough *bling*), for the role of the high school jock and the object of desire of Jonathan, will be just as pleasing.

But the movie's success is less sterling in HK, where it just opens, presumably because movie-goers here typecast it with yet-another-melodramatic-Taiwanese-film association, and one with GLBT-theme at that, which is a shame, for it deserves a wider audience, even as it's one that isn't without minor flaws of its own, as befits the fate of most coming-of-age films helmed by relatively young directors (in this case, Leste CHEN, all of 25).

The plot is decidedly simple, and the narrative mostly linear, tracking the friendship and love of its 3 main protagonists ("best friends" Jonathan, Shane, and Carrie, played by Kate Yeung who shines in limited screen time) in their youth, from age 11 in a school in rural Hualian (in 1991) to age 18 (1998) to the college year in Taipei (2005), with all of their ensuing majesty, glory, anxiety, complicity, confusion, pang, angst, and a dreamy quality thrown in.

The film will benefit from some minor editing for a more even pace. Original music by Jeffrey CHENG is intrusive at best. These minor quibbles aside, cinematographer Charlie LAM's rendering of the rural locations is thing of pure magic and the theme song by Ah Xin (of the "May Day" rock band fame) blends in magnificently with the direction to which the film eventually takes.

A friend asked if this is a tear-jerker to avoid at all costs. My answer to which is that hot and bitter tears may flow, not necessarily because of the inherent sadness of the human conditions, but may be because it deepens our understanding of those who are perceived to be "different" and living on the fringe.

And if the measure of a film lies in whether the audience connects with the characters towards the end, and whether it leaves you with the sudden urge to be young and fell in love all over again, then it isn't to be missed; and so it seems "Eternal Summer" is a welcome addition to the growing list of Taiwanese films with GLBT content.

Recommended.

This movie unfortunately is a mess for me. I can see this really cute movie in here somewhere but it is tangled up in so much issues.

The script feels like half of it is missing. It doesn't have any "connective tissue" holding the scenes together. Random scenes will just follow each other with no rhyme or reason how we got there. I don't need to be led around by the nose but it would be nice to have some sort of idea why/how things happened.

This is also hot helped by the fact this movie moves at a breakneck pace.

The message in here was also a little muddy for me. I honestly don't know what it was trying to say. But I appreciate the effort to tell a story like this in 2006 and in countries where these stories are not common.

Firstly I thought: oh boy, just another movie I know I'm going to think later, why I wasted my time watching it. Not being from Taiwan and not speaking mandarin, the movie actually was a big surprise. With actors I'm not familiar with but the type of people we could say, "the neighbor next door", which also gave the movie a more sense of reality, a sense of something that could really have happened with the neighbor next door. Or maybe, even with any of us. It's just a movie about teenagers growing up and learning about love and getting trapped in conflicting feelings. The beauty of this movie is they didn't need huge cinematographic production. No need of cursing, no need of explicit sex scenes, no need of over-doings to tell the story of a strong friendship being trembled. With also, a really nice soundtrack. I definitely enjoyed have watched it! Drop the idea of big productions, drop the language barrier and enjoy it...

Well I think this film pretty much sums up the notion that love transcends time and gender. A bittersweet tale of childhood yearning for a best friend that has taken a new direction as the two friends grow up to find the meaning of love and life when a girl threatens to upset the status quo.

The two lead male actors, Bryan and Joseph, give a sensitive and insightful performance as two best friends whose friendship is more than just ordinary. Kate plays the girl who comes between them and the girl shows grown-up sensibility beyond her age.

Heartwarming, poignant and ultimately heart wrenching. Watching it is enough to make any grown man want to cry.

Great treatment of the complexities of relationships and the difficulty of making the transition from the youthful summer of life to the autumn of adulthood.

At the superficial level, Jonathan is one of the best students in his class while Shane is a trouble-maker who has no friends. At the request of Shane's mother, their teacher orchestrates a bonding between Jonathan and Shane in the hopes of helping Shane. While both boys are reluctant, their friendship develops into something very important to them both, but not without costs.

Carrie enters the picture when they are all older and coming to terms with their sexuality, but this leads to Jonathan & Carrie "discovering" an insurmountable obstacle to their relationship. Carrie is sympathetic and still cares about Jonathan. Nonetheless she then turns her romantic attention to Shane who does reciprocate her feelings, but both fear alienating Jonathan who Shane continues to love as a best friend.

The chemistry between these three becomes an increasingly difficult mixture of love, resentment, respect, caring, jealousy and misunderstanding.

They each want to maintain the innocent and platonic relationships formed during the summer of their youth, but their sexual maturity and natural desire to pair off in more intimate relationships makes the rite of passage a painful and, as far as the movie is concerned, an unresolved one.

Very well done. The actors made their characters very believable and their plight was emotionally touching & moving.