Recently, I finally watched in its entirety, a Taiwanese movie called 那些年 ，我们一起追的女孩 (Nàxiē nián, wǒmen yīqǐ zhuī de nǚhái) – literally translated as “In those years, the girl we all chased after”. Me and my dad often watch Chinese movies together as our bonding session and lately, we’ve been tuned in to Chinese Star Movies a lot (Ch94 – for Sky Cable subscribers). Once as I was coming home from work, I got a glimpse of this movie and immediately recognized the ending song, which I had heard on TV before or when I went to KTV with family or friends back in China. I initially never thought it was part of a movie, I thought it was a music video for a really famous song, so I encouraged my dad to watch out for it so we could watch it together. Last night I was finally able to watch the entire thing, from start to finish, and it was such a lovely and heart-warming movie.
<DISCLAIMER: SPOILERS AHEAD>
The story begins with a guy who is getting ready to attend a wedding with his friends. After their short dialogue, the story pans back to 10 years ago in the year 1994, when the characters are still in their senior high school years. We meet the main character, a high school guy called Ko-teng, and his group of friends who all have their own *ahem*unique*ahem nicknames and quirks. Ko-teng and his friends are not the studious type of students who pay attention in class or get good grades, and they in fact find their own unique ways of entertaining themselves during boring lessons….like masturbating. But one thing they all have in common, except for our main character, is that they like the class honor student Shen Chia-yi, a pretty and friendly and studious girl who dislikes Ko-teng because of his personality towards studying. So when Ko-teng and his friends get found out for jerking off during class, the teacher decides to move Ko-teng to the seat in front of Chia-yi, in the hopes that her good demeanor and responsible attitude would somehow rub off on him. The two remain somewhat apathetic towards the other, though Chia-yi sometimes tells off Ko-teng for not bothering to study at all, and Ko-teng telling off Chia-yi for looking down on people who aren’t as smart as her. They stay like this until one day, Chia-yi forgets her English textbook and almost gets caught by the teacher for not having brought it, until Ko-teng passes off his book to her and takes the blame instead.
Chia-yi starts seeing a different side to Ko-teng, whom she initially thought cared about no one except his group of friends. She starts encouraging him to study harder by making practice exams for him to review, and then correcting it herself and giving him pointers on how to do better. Later on, Chia-yi persuades Ko-teng to stay with her after classes so they could review the lessons more, eventually resulting in Ko-teng getting better grades in the midterm exams. Ko-teng and Chia-yi eventually enter into a bet where the loser of the next midterm exams (basically the one who scores lower than the other), will have to do what the other wants. Ko-teng, though he tries his hardest, isn’t able to surpass Chia-yi; but Chia-yi surprises him by still pushing through with the bet by wearing a ponytail (which was his arrangement for her had she lost). From then on, Ko-teng realizes that he has fallen in love with Chia-yi as well. Ko-teng and his friends, as well as Chia-yi and her best friend Chia-wei, become close as the weeks go by…up until the end of their school days.
Finally, graduation comes and everyone is forced to face the reality that they will have to separate and move on to the next step of their lives. Each person in the group moves to their own university and pursues their own dreams. However, a little before the start of their university days, Ko-teng somehow confesses to Chia-yi when Chia-yi calls him crying about not getting into the school of her choice because she wasn’t feeling well when they took the university exams. So when Ko-teng and Chia-yi go to their own schools, they keep in constant communication with each other, Ko-teng calling Chia-yi every week to remind her not to hold hands with other people because he would get jealous and the like. Later on, they go on a date and have a fabulous time together. Ko-teng again endeavors to tell Chia-yi how much he truly likes her, but is afraid of how she will answer him (because he thinks she will turn him down), so she never gets to give her answer. Ko-teng later on tries to win Chia-yi’s affection with his show of strength by organizing a fighting competition in his school…..and loses, which causes him and Chia-yi to fight and “break-up”, because she considers it such a childish thing.
Chia-yi eventually dates one of Ko-teng’s friends, who was informed of their “break-up” and who has been in love with Chia-yi since their high school years, but they inevitably break up. Ko-teng and Chia-yi no longer talk to each other, until the infamous 921 earthquake, where Ko-teng worries about Chia-yi and her safety and tries to contact her and they have a long conversation about what had happened to the two of them, and how they never became a couple (though you can tell that they really had feelings for each other).
Years later (but still in flashback mode), Ko-teng receives a call from Chia-yi, calling to invite him to her wedding.
Finally continuing from the start of the movie, the other members of the group are again re-introduced, each finding their own careers and paths after all those years. They jokingly lament about how none of them in the group inevitably became Chia-yi’s groom, but laugh about the good days and how they had all fallen in love with the same girl.
At the end of the movie, we see Ko-teng, who has now become a writer, making a story out of his own experience with Chia-yi and his friends.
<END OF SPOILERS>
It’s only recently that I’ve been very fond of Taiwanese or Chinese movies like Cape No. 7 or Turn Left, Turn Right. I am especially fond of love stories, even those that don’t always end in a happily ever after, but those that impart a certain message or leave you thinking or nostalgic.
You are the apple of my eye, is such a movie. It starts off in the “present” and then flashbacks to the memories of the main character. Though we may not completely understand the setting in which it takes place, which in my case is because I went to an all-girls high school, we can look back in nostalgia at the high-school days that were. The experiences, the naïveté and innocence of it all, and as outlined in this movie, first love. The thing I liked about this movie is that there is nothing fanciful about it. It’s very realistic, and there aren’t any special effects whatsoever. It doesn’t try to appease the audience by doing stunts or exaggerating scenes. The characters, though weird in their own quirky ways, reflects the reality of schools – where students are all unique individuals that come together to find a common interest. Chia-yi and Ko-teng’s love story is the same, as it reflects two people who you can see have feelings for each other, but are faced with countless obstacles (including their own fears and emotions and personalities).
And though this doesn’t turn out to be the happy ending we expected, we see that it is not completely sad. As the main character initially says at the end of the movie, he says it’s hard to look at the girl you love the most, marrying someone who isn’t you. And then when he sees her looking so happy, he changes it and says, that you can indeed be happy even if the person isn’t you because you see the person you love the most with the person they’ve chosen, and seeing them at their happiest is what’s most important.
It’s very reflective of reality and of growing up. Because in life, we don’t always end up with our first love, or second love, or third love. And often, those experiences help us mature and grow up, and help us to look at life from a different perspective. And though we may not always get the girl or the boy that we like, part of growing up is watching somebody we love, be with the person that makes them happiest, even if it’s not us.
Despite this movie being a little under 2 hours long, there is so much that is said in the short time we see the characters grow from their high school days to their university days, and even to their adult-working days. You really bond with the characters, and you can often see yourself in the many characters portrayed in the story. And I personally think that in each of us, there is a little bit of the childish Ko-teng who grows up and matures; to the Chia-yi who studies so hard but doesn’t really know what she wants of herself or for her future; to the friends who loved Chia-yi longer than Ko-teng but who had to watch her taken away by their friend; to Chia-wei (Chia-yi’s best friend) who was always “one of the guys” in the sense that it was always Chia-yi who everyone was looking at, but who later on found her own path in life and became successful.
I haven’t found such an endearing movie in such a long time. The story is so simple, but it really reaches out to you in so many ways.
Giddens Ko, the director of the movie, is also the writer behind the story, as he is basing this story on his own experience in his childhood. This story is a semi-autobiographical look on his childhood and his memories and his experiences. It’s just such a beautiful thing to see it come together in this movie, and how Giddens’ story is something a lot of people can relate to.
SIMPLY. BEAUTIFUL.
你永远是我眼中的苹果。
