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Blue Gate Crossing (蓝色大门), dir Yee Chih-yen (易智言). 2003.

Taiwanese filmmaker Yee Chih-yen follows up his debut Lonely Hearts Club with the romantic drama Lanse Da Men (Blue Gate Crossing). Best friends Meng Ke-rou (Guey Lun-mei) and Lin Yueh-chen (Liang Shu-hui) are 17-year-old high school girls. When Yueh-chen admits she likes the boy swimming champ Chang Shih-hao (Chen Bo-lin), she talks Ke-rou into talking to him for her. But Shih-hao ends up liking Ke-rou instead, and the rest of the film develops their sweet friendship and adolescent romance. The only problem is that Ke-rou thinks she might be a lesbian because she’s in love with her best friend Yueh-chen.

The film has been well-received critically. Dennis Lim, in a review for the Village Voice, observed the film’s “meticulous framing and haunting use of repeated motifs” reflects the influence of Taiwanese New Wave directors Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang. The Portland Mercury described the film as “a modern-day Chinese lesbo twist on the old Cyrano story” that “treads new territory in the teen coming of age drama realm,” praising Yee’s “haiku-like directorial lyricism.”

Gentle and reflective, Blue Gate Crossing ultimately doesn’t make a terribly strong impact, but it does impress with its well-composed visual style and sensitive handling of bittersweet emotion.

eternal summer

“I like your pin. I was wondering that myself.”

We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented. It’s as simple as that.

“The improbable unfolding of recent events have led me to consider that no one thing is only one thing. How people endow what is familiar with new, ever-evolving meaning and by doing so, release us from the unexpected, the familiar, into something unforeseeable. It is in this unfamiliar realm, we find new possibilities. It is in the unknown we find hope. Here we stand in the Eiffel Tower, [which] for generations of Parisians, [has been] an aspiration for a better, brighter future. Similarly plural in meaning is a wedding. A wedding is a celebration which can also be understood as a union of two families, and in this case, this union takes on an even deeper significance. And for me, this wedding is proof that for all the differences between us, and all the forces that try to divide us, they will never exceed the power of love to unite us.” 

“I’m serving an undead bride who just dug her way out of her grave to find her love. I think I look drop dead gorgeous.”

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