School bullying, dead teenagers and a possible crime are the key elements of suspense in Chang Rong-ji’s (張榮吉) second feature, Partners in Crime (共犯). The film is nominally about three boys trying to uncover the reason behind the death of a girl who attends the same school, but is also a subtle examination of adolescents failed by the adult world.
The story begins with a typical school day for Huang (Wu Chien-he, 巫建和), a lonely and reticent teenager who is being blackmailed by several bullies. On his way home from school, Huang finds an apparently lifeless girl lying in a narrow alleyway. The discovery is also made by two other students from the same high school — Lin (Teng Yu-kai, 鄧育凱), a popular straight-A student and bad boy Yeh (Cheng Kai–yuan, 鄭開元).
The trio learn that the girl, who committed suicide, was an introverted schoolmate named Hsia (Yao Ai-ning, 姚愛寗). Having never met, the boys become unlikely friends and bond over the mystery of Hsia’s death.
Photo courtesy of Double Edge Entertainment
The mystery is gradually dispelled when Huang discovers that incessant bullying by Chu (Wen Chen-ling, 溫貞菱), Hsia’s classmate, led to her suicide. They then set out a plan to avenge her.
Events take a turn for the worse, however, when Huang drowns in a lake close to the school while celebrating the plans’ success. Lin immediately flees the scene, leaving Yeh to take responsibility. Feared, despised and rejected by his schoolmates, Yeh remains tight-lipped about the events surrounding the drowning, while an unexpected find leads him to unearth a tragic secret kept by his deceased friend.
With Partners, Chang follows up on the success of his critically-acclaimed feature debut Touch of Light (逆光飛翔, 2012), which garnered top awards at the Taipei Film Awards (台北電影獎) and Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎), and was selected as Taiwan’s submission to the 85th Academy Awards.
Partners benefits from atmospheric cinematography and tight storytelling. Narrow hallways and small rooms frame the characters, creating an aura of disquiet and claustrophobia. The dense landscape surrounding the lake suggests a wild, inhuman force that compels the characters to shed any facade of civility.
The technically polished film departs from genre conventions with its sympathetic exploration of the teenage psyche. Chang doesn’t seem so much interested in a mystery or a thriller filled with unexpected twists and turns as he is in portraying adolescent angst and loneliness. But it doesn’t dwell on the problem of school bullying and teen suicide. Instead, the it focuses mostly on the emotions and motivations of its young characters, whose acts are not the result of intentional malice and rage, but boredom, indifference and cowardice.
The frustration and discontent of these teenagers is a reflection of apathetic and disillusioned adults. Actress Alice Ko (柯佳嬿), in particular, serves as a symbol here in the role of counselor, telling the boys that there is nothing but void after death and that, in life, you can only depend on yourself.
Partners in Crime marks a promising beginning of Chang’s foray into the crime genre. His next project is reportedly a detective movie that has the working title Private Detective (私家偵探).
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