Murmur of Youth

Like his earlier A Drifting Life, both of tonight's films by Lin Cheng-sheng explore the complex nexus of family relations and individual feelings and desires. Two girls meet who share the same name (Mei-li, which means "pretty") but come from very different backgrounds. One lives comfortably in downtown Taipei with parents who are preoccupied with their own lives, the other lives more meagerly on the outskirts of the city with an attentive father and grandmother. Their paths cross when they begin working together in a movie theater box office, and their relationship quickly develops into a brief romance culminating in a sexual encounter. Lin takes time to establish the discrete circumstances of each Mei-li, and his delicate, understated style and motionless camera capture the intimacy of their unvoiced feelings and ongoing conversations about work, school, family, boys, and sex.

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