Editor's note: This is a nostalgic theater.
" Blue Door " debuted in the 2002 Cannes Film Festival Director's Biweekly Unit, and was nominated for the Hong Kong Film Awards that year's Best Asian Film. This film, which was born out of nowhere, created a trend of "freshness" in Taiwan's youth filming in the future. "Asia Weekly" praised the film for being "innocuous but not naive, sweet but not out of reality."
People who love this movie talk about the classic monologue at the end of the film - "Three years, five years later, or even longer, what kind of adults will we become? Is it a physical education teacher or my mother? Although I can't see myself with my eyes closed, I can see you."
20 years have passed, what kind of adults have the young boys and girls grown into? Maybe youth has become a distant and sad dream, but those who remember this movie must have seen themselves in it.
"Blue Door" poster
Before the new century, Taiwan's new movies also filmed youth films. Even if there are soft details in the soft Taiwanese accent, masters like Hou Hsiao-hsien and Yang Dechang will not just focus on the narrative of youth. The youth in " The People Come from the Wind Guest ", " Love the Wind and Dust " and "Guling Street Youth" are more important to express and look back on the changes of the times while commemorating personal growth.
The briskness of "Blue Gate" is that even if it touches on campus bullying, teacher-student feelings, sexual cognition, etc., with hidden sharp topics, it still gently embellishes them in bright elements such as beaches, summer, swimming pools, etc., and depicts a state that is infinitely close to the essence of youth under the telephoto lens.
Zhang Shihao's iconic blue floral shirt
does not have the standard "dog blood" elements of later youth films, and does not even have the background of a top student and a scumbag. The high school students in the film are not confused about their future studies and their secret love is entangled to the extreme.
video opening, two girls closed their eyes on the playground to fantasize about the appearance of the prince charming. The girl's thoughts are like the fragrance emitted from the green grass under the sun. Some people are clear and some people are suddenly aware of it.
Chen Bolin decoration Zhang Shihao
Lin Yuezhen ( Liang Youlin decoration) fell in love with Zhang Shihao (played by Chen Bolin), a boy in the school swimming team. He is handsome and plays the guitar well. Lin Yuezhen hopes that he can be his own husband. But she didn't dare to tell him. Every time she just looked at him from a distance, picked up the pen used by Zhang Shihao, and secretly wrote his name over and over in her notebook.
Only her good friend Meng Kerou ( Gui Lunmei decoration) knows this secret.
Zhang Shihao liked Meng Kerou, so he accidentally received a love letter written to him by Lin Yuezhen in the name of Meng Kerou. He was so happy that he made this excuse for Meng Kerou, and determined that he did not have the person "Lin Yuezhen" at all, which made Meng Kerou difficult to argue.
Zhang Shihao began to chase Meng Kerou, his method was direct and naive. Meng Kerou asked him over and over again, "What are you going to do?" He answered over and over again, "I just want to chase you!"
"I just want to chase you."
He, Zhang Shihao, Scorpio, O blood , swimming team, guitar club , anyone who has watched the movie thinks he is really good.
Meng Kerou probably thinks so, but she just can't like him. Although she asked Zhang Shihao to kiss her, just like she asked the physical education teacher to kiss her, it was so sudden that it made people a little at a loss. She wanted to kiss the boy and find out if she really didn't have any feelings for the boy. Just from the hard handwriting scratches on the walls, "I am a girl, I love boys" she shows how confused and angry she is when she doesn't play according to common sense.
"I am a girl, I love boys"
Yes, the person she likes is Lin Yuezhen. Zhang Shihao exchanged for this secret with his "pitting fork".
They kissed, carefully, and turned their heads tiltedly. As they approached, they hesitated and dodged and made up their minds. Then there was no more, the boy asked over and over again, "So did we break up?"
There were very few words for everyone in this movie, and many simple saliva words would be repeated and repeated many times. Those questions that seem to have no answers are repeated over and over again, but in fact the answers are already in the hearts of the people who ask questions.
Kiss Scene
After Zhang Shihao and Meng Kerou "break up", Lin Yuezhen still wrote Zhang Shihao's name on her laptop as usual. She used to be "superstitious" that the boy would fall in love with herself after the notebook was full, but finally one day, she threw away everything about him, and the handwriting on the notebook became Takuya Kimura . She also received a kiss from her best friend, and she couldn't help but hide her unspeakable likes. She ran away quietly, pretending to be calm and played with others.
Takuya Kimura
in the book, and Meng Kerou did not come to see Zhang Shihao's swimming competition in the end. Zhang Shihao practiced hard every day, but still did not get the champion who could make himself look handsome and help him to go to school. After the competition, he saw Meng Kerou, "I'm so unwilling to accept it. Summer is over like this, as if nothing is done."
And youth is really like this. Looking back at adulthood, all the little things that scratch the heart and lungs happen in summers that seem to have nothing happened, and in the process of self-confirmation and self-digestion that keeps asking questions. When everything is accepted and laid out, we will grow into those "adults".
. In the movie that belongs to youth, there are the sad smiling faces of boys and girls after being injured. No matter how sad you are, there will still be sunshine on your face.
Gui Lunmei Decoration Meng Kerou
Physical education teacher will also be secretly happy, and her mother "waited until" until the day she "lives up" without realizing it. That day will come sooner or later. I once thought that three or five years later would be a distant future. When I was young, I couldn’t see myself. But now, if you close your eyes, will you still want to see what you used to be?
Remember to watch "Blue Door" earlier, it will amplify Meng Kerou's entanglement. The confusion about whether to love boys or girls is like an unbreakable shackle, as if pointing to some ultimate proposition. After a few years, I don’t think that sexual contradictions have such an important weight in this thought.
This is three loves with completely different tastes. Smudge a slightly gray area that must be passed into the adult world into leisurely blue.
Meng Kerou and Lin Yuezhen
Lin Yuezhen's feelings for Zhang Shihao are pink gray, piled up on the girl's fantasy. The private goods and even garbage collected secretly are called glowing treasures in the secret love. He carefully sent his friends to test them, and then watched them helplessly as they became the light in the eyes of his lover. Adolescent girls add countless scenes to their hearts, which are unpredictable and most of the time they end up in vain.
Face toward
Zhang Shihao is enthusiastic and bitter towards Meng Kerou. He is open-minded and does not hide, and he puts all his confidence and honesty on his face. However, he falls in love with a girl who is almost impossible to fall in love with him, so what he thinks he gets becomes lost in a flash. "If one day you find out that you like boys, you must be the first to tell me." This is the humble and sincere thought that many people leave for themselves during adolescence, and it may not necessarily concern gender. It can be replaced by, if one day you forget a certain injury, let go of a certain obsession, or want to go back to a place you once left. Zhang Shihao's calm acceptance and confidence to hold on to the bright light of waiting is a cheerfulness that is difficult to say when he is an adult.
Meng Kerou, Zhang Shihao,
Meng Kerou's secret love for her best friend Lin Yuezhen is a bitter and sharp pain. On the one hand, you have to face the incompatible with the established rules of the world, and constantly test boundaries and discipline yourself in a way that you think is extreme. This may also contain the possessiveness unique to adolescence. Seeing that your good friend’s mind is entirely on others, you don’t want your good friend to be snatched away.She pushed her like Yuezhen to the young master she liked, and on the one hand, she also faced herself in the bright and comfortable appearance of the "happy little boy".
Kiss Scene
Yang Dechang once said, "Taiwan only has two types of movies - youth films and non-youth films." This sentence is enough to prove the weight of youth-themed movies occupy in Taiwanese movies.
Before the release of "Blue Gate", Taiwan experienced a brief craze in the Chinese film industry led by " Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon " in 2000, but due to the decline of the film industry itself, it inevitably fell into a trough: no local film released in 2001, whether it is an art film or a popular popular entertainment theme, had a box office of more than NT$1 million . In such an environment, Yi Zhiyan handed over his second feature film, bringing a new vision to the Taiwanese film market with a unique campus youth story at that time.
Last year, the Taiwan Film Critics Association selected the "20 Best Taiwanese Films in the 21st Century". "Blue Gate" defeated "The Girl We Chased Together" and gained a place for youth films. The films that were shortlisted include "Lust and Caution", "Assassin Nie Yinniang", and "Sedek Barre". When he went on stage to receive honors, the not-professional director Yi Zhiyan said that he couldn't tell whether "Blue Gate" was his own child or his own youth. "Maybe the two refer to each other and cannot be cut. So when outsiders say "Blue Door" is sweet, I think loneliness is bitter at all. To say "Blue Door" is too simple, I think it is actually more difficult to simplify it."
The ending of the movie is talked about by people
Gui Lunmei and Chen Bolin at that time have not yet become popular youth idols, and it is hard to even say that they really present something called "acting skills" in this movie. But it is such a natural naturalness that has become a rational and comfortable thing that many youth films will not meet in the future.
Gui Lunmei once recalled the relationship with this movie because she had a fight with her boyfriend at that time one afternoon and had a "very bad face." In that state, I met the assistant director who was looking for an actor for "Blue Gate", which opened the story later.
In 2018, the swimming pool of the High School of Normal University filmed in the movie was about to be demolished, Gui Lunmei watched the open-air screening movie with the audience by the pool, and posted on Weibo, "We have spent the hot summer here and had the youthful dream."
Gui Lunmei Weibo screenshot
Look, the summer that once did not do anything, it turns out that there will always be something left. And what we leave behind will become what kind of adults we become.
