Gateway to a new perspective on Taiwan's youth

Despite being a small film about friendship, love and coming of age, Blue Gate Crossing (藍色大門) owns big emotional power that moves you to tears at its end. In many ways, it also gives a refreshing new look to Taiwanese films.

The world of teen angst is not uncommon in the Taiwanese cinema. From Hou Hsiao-hsien's Millennium Mambo to Chang Tso-chi's The Best of Times, Taiwanese teens are either involving themselves in gangs or wandering the streets of Hsimenting. Those teenagers are usually hot-blooded, disadvantaged and alienated.

Director Yee Chi-yen (易智言) has instead made a film about a different group of teenagers, who are a bit more "normal," with scenes set on their high school campus or in quiet neighborhoods, instead of dark streets. For many Taiwanese, this is finally a film they can relate to, which easily evokes their high school lives.

Two girls, Kerou (Kwei Lun-mei, 桂綸鎂) and Yuezhen (Liang Shu-hui, 梁淑慧) are best friends. Yuezhen dreams about an ideal life with an ideal husband when she grows up, and the "sunshine boy" at school, cute swimmer Shihao (Chen Bo-lin, 陳柏霖) is her secret candidate for husband. She asks Kerou to play messenger, follow Shihao to the swimming pool and call out: "Yuezhen wants to be friends with you!"

Shihao instead becomes interested in the messenger and believes that Yuezhen doesn't exist. It was all Kerou's trick to try to talk to him, he believes, and he begins chasing her.

Yee carefully explores subtle emotions within the three characters without instilling too much of an adult's point of view. Kerou uses her mobile phone to update her best friend on Shihao. Intrigued by Kerou, the sunshine boy is nonetheless a shy adolescent. He keeps telling Kerou "I'm Shihao from the guitar club and the swim team. I'm a Scorpio and my blood type is O. I'm not bad!" Kerou, in turn, runs away from him.

These vivid scenes show genuineness and humor. In Yee Chih-yen's lens, Taipei doesn't look that gray anymore. It has instead graceful yellow and bright blue colors. Like the Italian film Cinema Paradiso, there is a sweet nostalgia about the innocence of youth.

But the film doesn't stay cute for too long. Although a mutual crush has developed between her and Shihao, Kerou still carries a secret that troubles her. Shihao, whose only goal in life is a swimming championship and becoming Kerou's boyfriend, is unaware of the secret Kerou is about to tell him. In this peculiar love triangle none of them taste romance -- for Kerou's secret is one that makes the three characters taste a melancholy they've never before tasted.

"Our lives become different when someone has a secret that cannot be told," Kerou tells Shihao.

"Everyone has a blue gate in their hearts." Yee says of the film. "It's our self-image and how we see our future."

True. And as the screen credits roll you'll find yourself wondering if you've become the person you wanted to be when you were young. Don't forget to bring a handkerchief.