A Brighter Summer Day

Gangsters, musicians, lovers, and street punks populate the gorgeous frames of Edward Yang’s portrait of coming of age—or trying to—in the politically charged Taiwan of the 1960s. While the streets of Taipei are still rocked by conflicts between Mainlanders and Islanders, for young Xiao Si’r (Chang Chen, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Red Cliff), they also resonate with the sounds of Elvis Presley and rock and roll and the promise of love and escape. Giving as much detail to the quiet, languid interludes of a teenager’s life as to the more hectic moments, Yang creates a powerful, novelistic vision of a generation’s lives, loves, and dreams, dizzying in detail and scope, yet as ethereal and moving as a poem. “Furnished with more sheer physical presence (including characters, settings, and objects) than any other fiction film I know of from the 1990s,” wrote Jonathan Rosenbaum.