‘You are the apple of my eye’ Review

‘You are the apple of my eye’ Review

A coming of age Taiwanese Romanic comedy film that is based on the director and author, Giddens Ko, and it is his semi-auto biographic book that the film’s plot is based around, all through some parts of the film was made more dramatic for the films sake it mostly sicks true to his story. In this film it dose place an interesting twist to the Romanic story that I wouldn’t like to say as it would ruin the film. The basic of the film is about five Taiwanese friend’s and there life growing up from high school until the female lead is married, with all five of them having their own crush on the female lead.

The 5 friends, including the main character Ko-Chen-Teng a childish slacker school prankster, Tsao Kuo-sheng the cocky friend, Hsieh Ming-ho (A-ho) who is the ‘fat guy’ of the story and the most serious of the five friends, Liao Ying-hung who likes to perform magic tricks and Hsu Bo-chun the smallest and most socially awkward for the funniest running joke throughout the film that I really don’t want to ruin.

The two main female leads are Shen Chia-yi, honour student at the high school and the girl who has caught the attention of all five of the boys, and her best friend Hu Chia-wei who spends most of the film drawing or talking to Shen Chia.

The film was filmed on location and you can tell as you get even more of this feel that these things really happened and are not just made up and get a feeling of realism mixing the stylized and over the tops scene’s that happen in the film just makes those scene’s stand out more when you can go from normal Taiwanese school to a air guitar, dancing teacher and a vulgar scene that comes very quickly in the films opening and really shows the kind of comedy that will be in the film, and it works really well and is one of the funniest scene’s in the film.

With the stylized scene’s, a lot like scot pilgrim vs the world just with less of a budget, help show that these scene’s shouldn’t be taken that seriously and really add to the funniness and comedic style of the director and the film as a whole. For a first time director he dose this very well using, there are two fight’s in the film and they both give off two very different emotional reactions because of the directors skill, this is done simply by having no over the top effects or music, this simply thing shows that this fight holds a lot more emotional importance then the one earlier.

As this is a personal story for the director I think he did a very good job of showing the building relationships between this group of teenagers as they grow up into adults, each having there own hopes for the future and how they change with growing up,  concentrating on the relationship between Shin and Ko-chen.

By the end of the film you really feel you have connected with each character and want to know what happens to them in the end, you find this out and really see why this isn’t your regular romance film and it stands out for that as well as the comedy, the direction and writing really helping to make this an over all great film.

All through the vulgar humour is funny I feel that it could have been more well placed to help show the romantic side’s up a whole lot more, I also find a few scene’s ruin the realism of the film but it doesn’t really take away that much from it as they are meant to be stylized and not realist and it lead to some of the funniest parts of the film but didn’t really fit the film to me for some reason.

4/5 as it is over all an amazing film, just I felt it could be better in certain place’s