Sorry, this movie sucks

Must See Movie...

Absolutely Fantastic

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

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.)

ETERNAL SUMMER (Sheng xia guang nian) is a delicate, quiet, understated and eloquent study of youthful interpersonal relationships form Taiwanese director Leste Chen from a screenplay by Cheng-Ping Hsu based on the novel by the same name by Chi-yao Wang. The style of the film allows a wide audience to appreciate the sexual challenges of teenagers and understand the need for finding love and acceptance in a world at times too busy to care.The story begins in grade school where Jonathan Kang (Bryant Chang) is a gifted student asked to 'supervise' another young boy in his class, Shane Yu (the dazzlingly gifted young actor Joseph Chang) who has an apparent learning disorder/attention deficit. Shane is rambunctious and athletically gifted while Jonathan is the quiet, reserved, brilliant student. The boys bond as children and grow up together into young men facing the exams for university entrance. A young girl Carrie (Kate Yeung) meets the two boys: first she challenges the studious Jonathan to take a trip to Taipei (ditching school) where she hopes to have a physical encounter. The hotel room is a disaster and Jonathan feels isolated from both Carrie's desires and from deserting his duties at school - and with Shane, who Jonathan loves far more than merely a best friend. Shane gradually moves into Jonathan's position as Carrie's physical companion and the resulting triangle results in confessions and incidents that allow each of the three involved young people to grow and understand the spectrum of love.The story is captured with exceptionally beautiful cinematic effects by cinematographer Charlie Lam and the atmosphere of play and passion is enhanced by the musical score by Jeffrey Cheng. Yet it is the sensitive direction by Leste Chen that encourages the three superb young actors to become immersed in their roles. Chen knows when to say enough (the sex scenes are sensual and suggestive without even approaching an R rating) and when to allow scenes of quiet and eye contact to carry the drama. This is a very fine film that deserves a wide audience, both young and old. Highly recommended. In Mandarin with English subtitles. Grady Harp

Movie Review: Eternal Summer (2006) By Ken LeeThis movie was a box office success in its native Taiwan when it was released late last year, garnering 4 nominations in Taiwan's Golden Horse Award along the way, and an eventual win for one of its male leads (Bryant CHANG Jui-chia, or ZHANG Ruijia in pinyin, who plays Jonathan KANG Zhenxing in a nuanced performance repletes with all the requisite repressed troubled mood), though a nod for its other male lead (Joseph CHANG Hsiao-chuan, or ZHANG Xiaoquan in pinyin, who plays the other-worldly Shane YU Souheng with tremendous vigour and enough *bling*), for the role of the high school jock and the object of desire of Jonathan, will be just as pleasing. But the movie's success is less sterling in HK, where it just opens, presumably because movie-goers here typecast it with yet-another-melodramatic-Taiwanese-film association, and one with GLBT-theme at that, which is a shame, for it deserves a wider audience, even as it's one that isn't without minor flaws of its own, as befits the fate of most coming-of-age films helmed by relatively young directors (in this case, Leste CHEN, all of 25).The plot is decidedly simple, and the narrative mostly linear, tracking the friendship and love of its 3 main protagonists ("best friends" Jonathan, Shane, and Carrie, played by Kate Yeung who shines in limited screen time) in their youth, from age 11 in a school in rural Hualian (in 1991) to age 18 (1998) to the college year in Taipei (2005), with all of their ensuing majesty, glory, anxiety, complicity, confusion, pang, angst, and a dreamy quality thrown in. The film will benefit from some minor editing for a more even pace. Original music by Jeffrey CHENG is intrusive at best. These minor quibbles aside, cinematographer Charlie LAM's rendering of the rural locations is thing of pure magic and the theme song by Ah Xin (of the "May Day" rock band fame) blends in magnificently with the direction to which the film eventually takes. A friend asked if this is a tear-jerker to avoid at all costs. My answer to which is that hot and bitter tears may flow, not necessarily because of the inherent sadness of the human conditions, but may be because it deepens our understanding of those who are perceived to be "different" and living on the fringe. And if the measure of a film lies in whether the audience connects with the characters towards the end, and whether it leaves you with the sudden urge to be young and fell in love all over again, then it isn't to be missed; and so it seems "Eternal Summer" is a welcome addition to the growing list of Taiwanese films with GLBT content. Recommended.

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: * * *