Starring Mei Gwei-lun, Rhydian Vaughan and Chang Hsiao-chuan. Directed by Yang Ye-che. At House RCA.
Mei Gwei-lun and Rhydian Vaughan in GF BF.
Sweet youths and vinegary adults. The dog-collar of dictatorship and the inevitable chains of capitalism. The romance of rebelliousness, of protest poems recited at midnight amidst shield-clanging riot police, of glancing over one's shoulder and finding, or believing that one has found, love.
Hailing from Taiwan and currently screening at House RCA, GF BF is an admirable coming-of-age story that rejoices in adolescent brashness and yet acknowledges the benumbing effect of reality. It takes a few leaves from a great Taiwanese film called A Brighter Summer Day (it would be nearly impossible, though, for any movie to match up to Edward Yang's 1991 masterpiece) and has its cinematic ancestry in Truffaut's Jules et Jim (minus the suicidal anxiety) and maybe Bertolucci's The Dreamers (minus The Doors soundtrack), but the appeal, the poignancy and the characters are all its own.
We follow three people from their high school days in 1985, as Taiwan is gripped with anti-communist fervour, to post-curfew university life in 1990 and, finally, to the beginning of a free, affluent era in the late 1990s where just about everyone in Taiwan seems to want a new Birkin bag. Mabel (Mei Gwei-lun, best known from Blue Gate Crossing) is a feisty girl who hangs out with boys, namely the prank-playing, freedom fighter Aaron (Rhydian Vaughan) and the extra-shy Liam (Chang Hsiao-chuan). They wreak havoc on their "ideology teacher" (and we thought such individuals only existed under communist regimes), shout slogans during street protests and get locked into a three-way state of longing, a romantic misfortune that will endure for the remainder of their lives.
Director Yang Ye-che has a fine touch, particularly in the first part set in the three friends' high school, that overcomes the sometimes shallow and predictable writing. He allows the romanticism of juvenile subversiveness, treating it with respect and delight, and the characters' transformation from juvenile firebrands into something else _ something much less romantic _ is a reminder not just of how we can all change, but also of the irresistible currents of time. What also lifts GF BF are the three main cast members, who veer from joyfully naive to deliciously confused. How I wish that Thai teen films could feel as mature as this.
