Student Days

Director Lin, himself an ex-teacher, has made four low-budget independent features about the lives of high school kids in provincial Taiwan, with more or less the same cast each time. This one is the most polished, although not the most imaginative. By Taiwanese standards, it has a likeable taste of reality in its character sketches, and depiction of delinquency and emotional problems. However, it also suffers from both major vices of Taiwanese cinema: careless photography and scenes of outrageously excessive sentiment.