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A powerful epic shown here in its full-length version, A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY is based on a shocking murder that occurred while Yang was attending high school. But it's less about a crime than it is a document of the social upheaval that followed the mass immigration from mainland China in 1949, played out to the beat of Western rock-and-roll. (The title comes from a mistranslation of the lyrics to Elvis Presley's Are You Lonesome Tonight?) Yang focuses on Xiao Si'r, a quiet loner who becomes involved with the local hoodlums, the Little Park Gang, and falls in love with the former leader's girlfriend, Ming. The relationship is doomed from the outset partly because Xiao Si'r is the archetypal adolescent male - he's a strict romantic, unwilling to accept any flaws. Some maintain that the film is both a critique and an elegy for a certain kind of male adolescent romanticism; others prefer to see the film as a portrait of social anomie and hysteria. In truth, no reductive reading could do justice to the grand scale, and even grander emotions, of A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY. "The richest novelistic movie made by anyone during the 90s . . . . A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY is arguably the greatest of all Taiwanese films . . ." (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader).
Special ticket prices apply.
Rated 14A
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