Eternal Summer (2006)

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The only consistently outstanding thing about Eternal Summer is the photography. It's gorgeous. There are times when the way the camera moves through a scene is so fascinating, so evocative and sensual, that I neither know nor care what the actors are doing - which is a good thing, because they're rarely doing anything worth watching.The girl and the boy who plays Shane are pretty good sometimes, and the boy who plays Jonathan is great in the very first scene, when he looks into the camera and smiles before leading us out the door and into the past - his only smile in the whole movie.The mostly piano score stays comfortably in the background except in crucial scenes, when it swells intrusively and annoyingly in its attempt to force us to be caught up in the drama we see, and succeeds only in detracting from it.The big sex scene is sweet enough, but it's about as believable as if Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford did one. Some straight actors can pull it off - better than many gay actors - but not these two.I like the slightly ambiguous ending, but the fact that the whole movie is a flashback means the first scene helps a lot in tying the end together. The story is unusual enough that it could have been interesting, and it actually is, sometimes, but not often enough to carry the movie.There's nothing new about a gay boy in love with his straight best friend, or about a girl who's in love with the gay but settles for the straight. What IS new is the marvelous extent to which this straight guy is willing to become whatever his friend needs him to be - without at all compromising his strong sense of himself - and with no resentment at all, no holding his nose while he does something that disgusts him, no hint of martyrdom - only love.That alone makes this movie - despite its many weaknesses and faults - very special. If there actually were even one such straight man on the face of the earth, this world would be a better place.(The DVD cover is misleading. There is no such scene in the movie, with the three of them lying entwined together in the sand, or anywhere else - not even in the deleted scenes.)

Sheng Xia Guang Nian tells the tale of two guys and one girl's love triangle relationship. From when they were in grade school to them in high school waiting to enter university. Kang Zheng Xing as a grade schooler was a good student, obedient and hardworking, he was made by the teacher to be Yu Shou Heng's partner and from then his studies was affected. Still, he was mild mannered and nice, but afflicted with emotional upheavals.Yu Shou Heng was a boy with ADD, very mischievous, very naughty. He didn't have any friends and Kang Zheng Xing became his first friend. Yu Shou Heng matured over the years to become the basketball team's star player in high school and even made it into the university team. He's tall, dark, athletic, outspoken and provides a good contrast to the mild Kang Zheng Xing. Despite all that, the two of them remained close friends going to and from school together.I really like the parts which Yu Shou Heng would pick up Kang Zheng Xing, in his bicycle and his motor scooter later. It's like the standard recurring motif in all films of this genre. Ya, it reminded me of Cardcaptor Sakura where Touya would never fail to pick up Yukito to go to school together.Du Hui Jia was a girl from Hong Kong who came between the two friends. She was first Kang Zheng Xing's girlfriend after they got to know each other from the newspaper club, then they skipped classes to go up Taipei together and even checked into a motel. But after Kang Zheng Xing rejected her, she got to know Yu Shou Heng better and after a few encounters and with Yu Shou Heng making into university, the two of them got together behind Kang Zheng Xing's back.I think Du Hui Jia was portrayed very well, seeing her torn between the two guys, and her knowing Kang Zheng Xing's secret yet not being able to do anything, and even coming between the two guys, it's quite difficult. Yu Shou Heng was quite evenly portrayed, but I thought that he became very stereotypical of all shounen-ai couples which made his feelings for Du Hui Jia seem rather awkward. Special mention is reserved for Kang Zheng Xing. His internal emotional struggles was so well portrayed that I really felt so deeply for him. That actor Bryant Chang won the Golden Horse award as New Performer for this role. That explains the well portrayal of Kang Zheng Xing.The film was quite slow paced which allowed for the emotional development of the various characters, I liked it. Though sometimes it can fall a bit too melodramatic, but it's not really that indulgent. The story is sad, but not to crying/wailing kind of sad, it's the sadness that hits you in the guts and make you think about the characters whole night long kind of sad.With the two guys one girl theme, I'd first think of comparing it with Fleeing by Night, only that Eternal Summer is more explicit in the expression of emotions of love. It's not like I don't like sex scenes, but somehow I prefer more implicit relationships. It's like preferring shounen-ai to yaoi.

Most say Eternal Summer is a gay movie. But I would rather call it a movie about relationships.Newbies Bryant Chang and Joseph Chang play two best friends who come a long way from primary school after they were paired off as motivational buddies by their form teacher. As the 'third party' Carrie (Kate Yeung) enters the scene, the relationship becomes more complicated. All three struggle with love and friendship – a line that can seem so clearly divided but is not.With 4 nominations at the Golden Horses, this movie caused a stir in Taiwan, both in terms of theme and story. Fortunately, it did not sink into typical Taiwanese melodramatic mode. The director takes his time to unfold, filled with awkward yet genuine moments. Note the parallels that he draws, and the subtle contrast between scenes reveal more than what is said.Many times, the audience may feel frustrated with the slow pacing, and wished that the characters would just acknowledge what they feel. Perhaps this is a reflection of individuals being unaccepted and different in society, whether you are a gay, migrant or loner. You may just identity with the 3 characters' suppression and lack of ability to communicate.With Lan Yu winning the Golden Horse, and Brokeback Mountain the Golden Globes paving the way, homosexual themed movies have started arriving to the shores of Singapore (with some censorship). Just a few years before, it would almost seem impossible that movies like Eternal Summer would be screen here. Liberation of the authorities or sophistication of the audience? To emphasize, this is not just another 'gay' movie, and may disappoint those going for the wrong reasons. With the tagline "No One Wishes To Be Lonely, Neither Do We", it can be viewed as a beautifully shot movie on the pains of growing up, friendship and love.

What's so special about this new romantic-sorrowful flick isn't its brief dalliance with gay love, nor its category III rating in Hong Kong. The rating no one should get worked up over, since they seem to be dishing them out like there's no tomorrow nowadays with Little regard for actual content. In Eternal Summer's case it's likely due to a super short scene depicting the two male leads naked in bed and doing the nasty, something even the ho-hum Brokeback Mountain managed to get right with less fuss.No, Eternal Summer dances around its main point to an exaggerated degree, in the end causing us to wonder what that point was meant to be to begin with. Rather, what's so special about this one is its membership in a very exclusive club of movies with enough projectile velocity to break free of Taiwan, where it was made. Taiwanese cinema has become rare, something we lament. For that only, Eternal Summer demands your support.It unfortunately possesses scant few other redeeming traits. Viewers can see the whole gist of it from the get-go, and in its arsenal of tricks exist no better weapons than an age-old threesome of young and restless characters in search of definition. But they hardly do much to find meaning, which is likely a stilllife phenomenon someone like Taiwan-based mastermind director Hou Hsiao Hsien would have worked wonders with. But trusted to 25 year-old Leste Chen (The Heirloom) it all comes across flat and uncompelling. Never mind, young auteurs like that require our attention and movie-going prowess, so we're willing to take an uninspired story as part of proceedings.Two additional newcomers do the main two protagonists, rebellious James Dean-type Shane by the darkly alluring Joseph Chang and geeky, lost soul Jonathan via Bryant Chang. Their characters meet as young boys at a rural school when Jonathan is asked by a teacher to buddy up with attention-lacking Shane as a means of getting the weaker student into the swing of things, and the rest constitutes a very short history.Years later, they're best friends, almost inseparable and with an undercurrent of attraction not entirely par for the course, although that part is left for audiences to quite easily deduce on their own.Into the mix is then thrown Carrie, played by sexy tomboy Kate Yeung, who we've before seen in Mighty Baby and The Eye 10. This young lady gives mid-90's Liv Tyler as serious a marathon for her money as can be arranged, easily stealing the show with her range of facial expressions and sincere, almost jocular attitude. She's largely wasted in Eternal Summer, with a skillset far more suited to the sarcastic niche filled by fellow youthful lovelies like Cherrie Ying.All this takes place as the trio gets ready to finish high school and move on to college, and the plot follows them as they do so. One neat aspect of Eternal Summer is how it effectively excludes everyone else, forcing the story to highlight only the three as if they were the epitome of iconoclastic social angst. This does work, but lacks the power and impact derived from a truly interesting story to back it up.Love and emotion get their two cents in as Jonathan and Carrie begin a timid exploration into the world of lust, something merely glanced in a missed opportunity transpiring at a Taipei love hotel. Then the balance of pheromone power shifts to see Carrie and Shane give it a go, with friendship remaining at the forefront all along.Sure there's a desire to find out more about what drives people as they discover new ground in themselves. And the rustic, faux-retro feel (looks like they were indeed going for a late 90's setting) helps in avoiding gimmicks and other lifestyle distractions. Yet, Eternal Summer goes by unnoticed almost, and by the time its so-called sensational climax arrives the average viewer would be challenged to do more than tick a box on a checklist. Yes, it's still not a commonplace theme in cinema overall, let alone Asian cinema, but so much more could have been done with it.Seriously, given a more mature crew at the wheel, Eternal Summer could have been deftly transformed into something to talk about for a while as a symbol of encompassing gay themes, or at the very least as a brain-boggling surreal love flick in the vein of 1999's Where Have all The Flowers Gone with Zhou Xun.Bereft of potency, Eternal Summer inhabits a perpetual limbo state populated by movies that look good (the Taiwan countryside makes for some lush environs), are capably written on paper and could have been infinitely more aggressive in going about their business, but didn't.That's a shame and not the type of shot in the arm Taiwan's filmmakers need. We're still waiting for that particular season to come along.Rating: * * *