In a refreshing departure from his gloomy and sexist Blue Cha-Cha (深海), director Cheng Wen-tang's (鄭文堂) teen drama Summer's Tail (夏天的尾巴) is a surprisingly bright production. Credit for the youthful feel of the film goes to the director's 20-year-old daughter, Enno Cheng (鄭宜農), who co-wrote the script and lead the cast to tell a Taiwanese coming-of-age story.
The film is about four high school kids and one summer of rock 'n' roll, friendship and puppy love.
Would-be rock star Yvette (played by Enno Cheng) is a free-spirited, big-hearted teen forced to drop out of school because of a congenital heart disorder. Her best friend, Wendy (Hannah Lin, 林涵), is a straight-A student who carries a spray paint spray can in her schoolbag. Reticent and super-smart, Jimmy (Bryant Jui-chia Chang, 張睿家) is expelled when his love for a teacher gets out of hand. Japanese exchange student Akira (Dean Fujioka) plays soccer and doesn't do much else.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF SKY FILMS
The four idle away the summer with music, adolescent melancholy and laughter in southern Taiwan's verdant rice fields and canals. When a tragedy involving a neighbor occurs, the four friends are catapulted into the grown-up world.
The plot, though hardly groundbreaking, is well executed with eloquent cinematography and smooth editing. The island's southern plains never looked so idyllic and the film's breezy tone lures the audience into drifting from one scene to the next.
The pretty-faced young cast does a reasonably good job of portraying adolescents trying to define themselves as they approach adulthood. Award-winning actress Lu Yi-ching (陸弈靜) deserves a special mention for bringing to life possibly the most lovable mother figure seen in Taiwanese cinema for years.
However, the real star of the film is Enno Cheng (鄭宜農). Nominated for the Best New Performer gong at this year's Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎) for her role in this film, the versatile young artist turns in a strong performance and shines both as a promising actress and talented singer. Featuring simple, empowering tunes by the aspiring musician, as well as local rock outfits Aphasia (阿飛西雅), Orange Grass (橙草樂團) and Fire Extinguisher (滅火器), the sound track lends the work juvenile vigor and almost justifies the closing sequence that includes a music-video set.
A competent movie, Summer's Tail proves that a familiar if not formulaic coming-of-age story line can be a commercial success, as long as the movie stars teen idols, has strong technical credits, and perhaps most importantly, portrays a young adult's firsthand perspective.
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and