Adolescent desire vies with adolescent angst in this bland slice of pink cinema from Taiwan. Meng (Lun-Mei Guey) is a teenage schoolgirl facing a crisis. Her best friend Yuezhen (Shu-Hui Liang) has a crush on high school hunk Zhang (Bo-Lin Chen), but after a Cyrano de Bergerac-style chat-up-by-proxy goes disastrously wrong, Meng discovers that the hunk has feelings for her, not her lovesick friend. As if this troublesome love triangle isn't complicated enough, Meng slowly realises that she's in love with Yuezhen.
Teenage hormones and tongue-tied turmoil only make the relationship between these teens more difficult. As Meng confronts her lesbian feelings, the three kids discover that first love is never easy and that gay - or straight - unrequited crushes are painful experiences. Yuezhen ends up almost stalking Zhang as she collects his empty water bottles, pinches his diary, and pockets his chewed old biros to keep as love tokens; Meng finds herself having to cope with bullying classmates and an awkward date with Zhang.
"IT NEVER REALLY GOES ANYWHERE"
At its best when dealing with the rituals of high school romance - the secret notes, graffiti declarations of love, and interference from teachers - this Taiwanese drama doesn't really have very much to say for itself even with its gay plotline. Tenderly tiptoeing around its trio of characters, it's an overly earnest outing about characters too young to know themselves. It never really goes anywhere and leaves most of its more interesting ideas - like the sub-plot about the PE teacher with a crush on Meng - hanging.
"What is this word?" asks Yuezhen during revision for an school English exam. "Com-mun-i-cation." It's the perfect metaphor for the film's teenage protagonists, who're too young to know their own feelings, let alone how to communicate them to each other. Which is a shame since it makes for a stunted, uneventful story.
In Taiwanese with English subtitles.
Blue Gate Crossing (2004)
