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There is an Eternal Summer Hiding in Everyone's Heart

Few film fans fail to recall the success and sensation Brokeback Mountain produced in the beginning of 2006. Director Ang Lee said it was because “there is a Brokeback Mountain hiding in everyone’s heart.” This assertion could also be applied to 2006’s Eternal Summer.

This movie was a box office success in its native Taiwan, a market often dominated by Hollywood movies that seldom produces a hit of its own. Eternal Summer garnered four nominations in Taiwan’s Golden Horse Award, an Oscar Award-level film festival in the province, and an eventual win for Best New Actor for one of its male leads (Bryant Chang Jui-chia, who played Jonathan Kang Zhenxing). Though the movie has not been shown in China mainland theatres, movie viewers in Beijing and Shanghai who have had a chance to view the film have given it good reviews.

Before the release of the movie, some media outlets referred to Eternal Summer as the “boy edition” of Blue Gate Crossing, another Taiwan-produced classic youth movie that portrayed a “bizarre love triangle” involving two girls and a boy. So it’s not hard to guess the simple plot of Eternal Summer. Two boys, Kang and Shane Yu Shou-heng (played by Joseph Chang), have grown up as best friends. Kang realizes he has feelings for Yu. Yu, on the other hand, tries to keep both Kang and his ex-girlfriend Hui-chia (Kate Yeung), a mysterious migrant student from Hong Kong, by his side.

But after watching the movie, one can easily find the difference between the two. Eternal Summer focuses more on the highest form of human sensation: friendship, instead of love. Who didn’t have one or two best friends at the age of 16 with whom you always hung around with and wanted to stay with forever? But, as Yu says in the movie, “Everything has changed now that we are grown ups.”

So I sincerely recommend this movie to those who have once had an eternal summer in their lives and who have suffered the gradual loss of a best friend who just drifts away into adulthood. Let Eternal Summer take you back to those days, when the sky was still blue, when boys sweated on the basketball court and girls screamed on the sidelines.