Over in High School Land, Lin Yuezhen (Liang Shu-hui) is smitten with Zhang Shihao (Chen Bo-lin), a member of the school swim team. She expresses this by stealing his stuff, mostly but not exclusively from the rubbish, and keeping them in a box in her room like holy relics. All this in lieu of actually talking to him. Instead, she sends off her friend Meng Kerou (Guey Lun-mei) to do anything that involves actually interacting with him. Kerou isn’t keen, but she begrudgingly does so, doing the requisite things like pressing him on his love life, shoving letters in his face, that sort of stuff. Despite her insistence that it’s Yuezhen who wants to know, due to her ongoing non-appearance, Shihao comes to the conclusion it’s the old ‘asking for a friend’ gambit and it’s actually Kerou who has a thing for him, and, hey, he’s willing to make a go of it and tries awkwardly to put the moves on her. He likes ‘em runnin’ hot-and-cold, I guess. Kerou isn’t convinced that that’s what she wants though, if you catch my drift.

The vague description I’ve seen essentially characterises the film as a queer version of Cyrano de Bergerac. I’m… not sure that quite works out, unless we’re going for like that one Cyrano-themed Oglaf cartoon.† Then again, that doesn’t quite scan either. The set up doesn’t quite allow for a proper Cyrano to play out. Perhaps if the two girls’ roles were reversed? Well, anyway, it feels like an apropos comparison would be something like Gregory’s Girl (1980), albeit with a lesbian. Not that it exactly aligns with that either, but the film’s tone and the nature of its plot beats make it feel like a somewhat natural companion piece to Bill Forsyth’s non-story of awkward teenage romance, even if Blue Gate Crossing has a lot more in the way of actual plot.

That is to say, the film puts a lot of stock into the experience of teenage emotion, with a lot of earnestness to the presentation of its characters and their issues. Their struggles to figure out their identities aren’t portrayed in a particularly dramatic manner, with the questions surrounding Kerou’s sexuality, the main driving point of the plot, being handled in a fairly low-key manner. Unlike many a film of its type, for all her struggles, her conflict is pretty much internal. There’s no grand crisis that threatens to expose her secret to the everyone. No one finds out inadvertently and decides to use it for leverage or some nonsense. The closest to that level of girl’s comic melodrama involves the leaking of the love letter mentioned in the above synopsis, thereby allowing for some honestly pretty minor bullying by the standards of this sort of film; it’s treated as an annoyance that informs some characters’ actions and reactions, but not a major threat. While the film affords the characters more opportunity to be mean than Gregory’s Girl, it never the less keeps things entirely reasonable. The teenagers’ actions are often pretty damn stupid, and yet they always seem stupid in a believable manner, recognisable as how teenagers act. Kerou’s affection for Yuenzhen is somewhat inexplicable from an outsider’s perspective; the latter seems to have little in the way of redeeming qualities; but at the same time, it’s not exactly unrelatable for people with memories of being a teenager. On that note, Yuenzhen’s rather weird behaviour and self-interested attitude aren’t really presented as malicious either, a lot of what she does is more in line with the sort of things that teenagers do. She’s difficult to like, but at the same time she’s also largely relatable.

Teenagers are shitheads is what I’m saying.

Ordinarily I’d like to talk a bit about context and acting and all that, but given the film’s in Mandarin and I have basically no knowledge of the language, I can’t really gauge the latter. Similarly, I’m not really qualified to talk about its context within Taiwanese cinema, as I haven’t really seen enough to make any real commentary on its place within that eco-system. From my vague experience of the subject, and Taiwanese media in general (or at least the kind that sees export), the cultural memory of the period of martial law (1949-1987) looms large, understandably so. Blue Gate doesn’t really though. It makes sense, the characters are ostensibly too young to really remember it (hell, they might actually be; they did actually cast under twenties to be these seventeen-year-olds), and I suppose it’s the nature of teenagers not really think about that sort of thing. Everything was horrible fifteen years ago, but that was then, right? Let’s just focus on what’s horrible now, like… current wars abroad and also how expensive DVDs are? That was the big thing I remember from being a teenager around the time this came out. £20 for a DVD with no features other than a trailer? AND we’re invading Iraq? What a shitty time to be alive. I digress, but that particular well of inquiry feels pretty shallow from my perspective and I don’t really have the knowledge to investigate it further. I suppose, given as we’re increasingly hearing about the sort content deemed acceptable in film in the People’s Republic as everyone’s scrambling to make things that are saleable in the burgeoning and highly censorious Chinese market, it’s the sort of film that could more-or-less only be made in Taiwan (given the PRC’s ever tightening reins in Hong Kong). This sort of subject matter is pretty much off the table entirely to begin with, the idea of it being treated in such a matter-of-fact manner seems impossible.

It’s just a mellow slice-of-life. Taipei is shot through with a crisp clean look that one imagines doesn’t reflect reality, but speaks to the vague nostalgic tone of the piece. The film engages in a wistful tone, on the one hand having a longing for the apparent simplicity of youth, wary of the uncertainty of the future, while on the other aware of the potential that that uncertain future brings. The present cusp of adulthood that the characters are on is one of awkwardness and angst, rather than the salad days. This will inevitably not be the most important moments of their lives, nor will they likely be the best. Things will inevitably change, perhaps for the better, perhaps not, but even as the film ends, we’re assured, with both hope and melancholy, that this isn’t the ‘end’ of the characters’ stories.

† If you're unaware of Oglaf, I'll warn you about searching it, as it's typically not remotely safe for work.