A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

This isn't so much a drama as an intimate observational documentary following the lives of people recently arrived on the island of Taiwan after the Chinese communist party took control of the mainland. There is still a considerable degree of militaristic life amongst the population, and the secret police are never far from the minds of the adults whilst the adolescents come to terms with their own, quite often gang-related, issues too. Those are not, initially at any rate, gangs in the violent sense of New York's "Jets" and "Sharks", but they are just as important in providing a degree of structure, identity and security for a rootless youth who are as uncertain of their future as they are of their past. With more than an oblique nod to "Romeo and Juliet", we meet "Si'r" (Chang Chen) who has a curiously ambivalent relationship with "Ming" (Lisa Yang), with both affiliated to opposing gangs at their high school. On the face of it, you might be forgiven for thinking that we are now in for something soapily teen-angsty, but by using a combination of more standard and more subtle photography, we start to find ourselves more immersed in the lives of these kids as they grow up and find their own identies all against a backdrop that sees their parents' generation coming to terms with a constantly simmering threat of political and social upheaval that leaves no-one safe from the authorities determined to discover any potential communist activists or sympathisers. There isn't so much a pace here as a series of breathing exercises. Some of it hairs along rapidly and occasionally quite violently, some of it is much more cerebral and discursive and some of it - just like life itself - is as dull to watch as it presumably is to live through. This also isn't only a sensitively filmed critique on the coming of ages of people, but also of a nation state and it is not without some elements of joy - though possibly not humour, as is takes it's time to unfold in a fashion that has an unusual and characterful authenticity to it. Like any film that approaches four hours in duration, it does have it's fallow moments but on the whole the performances provide us with measured and engaging characters and if you can get a chance to watch it on a big screen, it's play out a bit like a folk-song lyric Joan Baez might have sung.