Delve Into Taiwanese Film This Weekend — It’s Worth It

This weekend, the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture will be showcasing one of the most popular films to come out of Taiwan in the last several years, and it’s completely worth your time.

A colleague of mine described You Are The Apple Of My Eye as the Taiwanese answer to American Pie, and that’s not far off, as it delves into the universal crises of adolescent relationships and the way they really turn out, as viewed through the unique prism of the Taiwanese middle class.

Apple follows the slow teenage romance of Ko-teng and Chia-yi as they flirt with the idea of flirting, up to the point of trying to figure out what love really is as their adult sense of self develops. And all during that tumultuous cauldron of the teenage years — high school. And then it follows that period well into college and young adulthood, providing the perspective on adolescence that often makes those years so bittersweet and which films about the period often don’t bother with. In that sense, Apple does what the best foreign films do best: shows us the life of another people’s different from ourselves, and then shows us how similar life really is.

Taiwanese cinema has been exploding over the last several years, threatening to reclaim the originality that struck it during the New Wave period of the early to mid-’80s, and the Museum of Fine Arts-Houston is offering Houston a window into that growth. That continues this weekend, as the MFAH screens You Are The Apple Of My Eye on Sunday (November 18th) afternoon at 5PM.

Anyone who looks at the weekly studio offerings and longs for something different, this might be just what you’re looking for.