Walking out of Sadness: the Other Side of Taiwan Cinema

Abstract

City of Sadness (1989) marks the beginning of an end in the history of Taiwan cinema. For the past 20 years, Taiwan cinema was heavily politicized in which, on one hand, it was embedded with government propaganda, or, on the other hand, it became a tool to explore historical trauma left by the Japanese colonialization and the KMT post-colonial rule. This paper would like to explore another side of Taiwan cinema, which can be tentatively classified as the “youth nostalgia” films. This trend starts with Blue Gate Crossing (2002), in which friendship and sexual awakening were foregrounded to portray the lives of three main characters in their high school days. It then was followed by films such as Eternal Summer (2006), Summer’s Tail (2007), Secret (2007), Wind of September (2008), and recently You’re the Apple of My Eye (2011). The milieu for these films is mainly at the high school campus. The narrative circles around their school life, rites of passage, hetero- and/or homo-sexual relationships among friends. High school years in these films are depicted as good old days. Even the imagery is sometimes tinted with yellowish color to evoke nostalgic feeling. Most important of all, those films are depoliticized to the extent that social law and order, the burdens of Taiwan history, and adult figures are all absent from the narrative. These films signify a new opening for Taiwan cinema to “walk out of sadness.