You Are The Apple Of My Eye (8/10)

A surprisingly and quietly brilliant movie from Taiwan.

This reminded me a lot of unconventional love stories from the silver screen like Korea's My Sassy Girl and (500) Days Of Summer. And to a certain extent with all the lewd jokes, also reminded me of Korea's hilarious 0.

But the best thing for me was how I could totally relate to it. First, it's set in the 90's which was also the same time that I got into movies and music and basketball. There was a reference on the NBA trading cards where the characters talked about how the value of Grant Hill was smaller than Anfernee Hardaway (look at them now!).

And the use of Taiwan's most popular celebrity Jay Chou was also some very nice moments. Especially when the story went into the 2000s and Chou's Nunchukus was playing, I immeditely thought back to my university days as that's when I fell in love with that song too.

But it's Giddens Ko's masterpiece in writing and directing (which is his first I must add) that really brought out the best in this autobiographical storytelling.

Right from the beginning with the ingenious "air guitar playing" in the classroom to the fantastic way the story ended, the humour and the pulling of the heart string were original and brilliant.

What slowed things down was in the middle. I thought some scenes took too long to be told; and because we had no idea how the movie was going to end, some scene wouldn't have made too much sense when it happened so that sort of seemed draggy. But this is why this movie deserve a second viewiing as a lot of things in the middle tie up nicely in the end. Like the fight-club-ish scene which I thought was a drag became a pivotal scene towards the end.

But certainly some other scenes like three pairs of feet in the shower were unnecessary. Those were purely for the gag factor and in a movie like was uncalled for.

There were some obscene scenes too that was deleted while I was watching this in Malaysia, most noticeably when Ke Zhengdong's character was walking around his own home naked. That was unfortunate as I prefer to be the one to judge whether a scene should be included or not.

But the actors in this movie all were competent enough in delivering the required acting. Ko's colourful characters with unique individualisms all came through from the actors portrayal. And Michelle Chen was just as Ko had described to us through the monologue, just above average in looks but something about her captivated everyone.

This was really a joy to watch but also because the story was realistic, no sugar-coating, and totally relatable by me personally. So many times I thought I knew the ending and if that happened, this movie would have failed. But I'm glad I was wrong.