Winds of September
With Taiwan’s 1996 baseball scandal (in which some of the island’s most popular professional players were caught match-fixing) looming in the background, Winds of September reminisces over the loss of innocence of its characters with a tenderness seldom evident in the average coming-of-age drama.
Being the Taiwanese chapter of the Eric Tsang-produced trilogy on youth (the Hong Kong entry being the recently released High Noon), each of which revolves around a closely-knit group of seven boys and two girls, promising director Tom Lin’s first full-length feature is set in motion when the group’s hunky leader Yen (Rhydian Vaughan) hooks up with a gangster’s girlfriend, eventually leading to a revenge attack on his close friend Tang (Chang Chieh). Meanwhile, the long arm of the law threatens to invade the high school characters’ fantasy world and crush their friendship, as another boy from the group shows up one day on a flashy motorcycle, which is obtained from a dubious source.
An adorable film on tested relationships, hidden desire and youthful shenanigans, Winds’ understated drama – coupled with its unhurried pacing, modest ending, and a glaring absence of parent characters – feels like the recollections of an adult who’s finally at peace with his adolescent memories. Beneath the general lack of humour on the surface, one can almost imagine a director who’s too intimate with his characters to even crack jokes about them. Edmund Lee
Dir Tom Lin, Not yet rated, 105 mins, Opens Thursday 4
2 Comments Add your comment
Winds of September is not a film that’s shy about its earnestness as it very well shouldn’t be. After all, that’s what youth is. The film tells an episodic coming-of-age story set in 1996 in a provincial town in Taiwan, and follows a tight-knit pack of seven high school boys in the months leading up to graduation. The film is best in its early moments as it relishes in its episodic storytelling and shows the boys engrossed their youthful adventures. They go to professional baseball games and cheer on their heroes, one of whom is the slugger Liao Min-hsung. They break into the swimming pool at night and go skinny-dipping. They ride around in motorcycles. They horse around and crack jokes. They cut school. They smoke, curse, and drink beer. They get chewed out by the school disciplinarian. Through it all, the camaraderie and joy of youth comes across loud and clear. This may not provide dramatic thrust, but the energy and charm in these scenes more than makes up for it. Meanwhile, the film gradually focuses on two boys in the group: Yen (Rhydian Vaughan), the handsome playboy, and his best friend Tang (Chang Cheh) a shy boy with a more serious outlook than the others. It’s a familiar dynamic seen often in high school stories—I don’t know why, but the film kept reminding me of John Knowles’ A Separate Peace. After Yen’s womanizing causes problems for the boys as well as Yen’s girlfriend, Yen and Tang grow apart. Each grows to believe the other has betrayed him. Overall, the performances of these young actors are convincing. And the script skillfully shows how minor things can lead to big emotions during adolescence. But the final third of the film loses steam, precisely because of a contrived narrative device, which then becomes the vehicle on which the story is towed rather clumsily to the finish line. Not surprisingly, since this inciting narrative device was false, every beat that depicts its consequences also rings false and the performance of the actors falters drastically in the scenes that follow. I’m not saying that all bad acting is due to a flaw in the script, but that most is. Whatever the case, it’s a shame the film took this direction, since it clearly didn’t need it. Afterwards, the boys, who once called one another brothers, blame one another for not being true good friends with the kind of intensity that only young people in their late teens can have about ‘betrayal.’ Meanwhile, interspersed throughout the film are news clips of a baseball scandal, in which players in Taiwan’s professional league, including Liao, are revealed to have thrown games for money. It’s clear the film means for the baseball scandal and the betrayal of the players to echo and heighten the disillusionment that the young characters experience. But this only works in theory in large part because of the one wrong turn the story takes. In the end, despite all the outbursts of intense emotion that follow, the film fails to pack an emotional punch. It’s really too bad because with a few small modifications in the script, this film could have been something spectacular.
But has the last word been said ? Is all hope to be lost ? Is the defeat final No !(Charles De Gaulle , French president )
Add your comment