Get the Gauze
As nostalgic, soft-focused, weepy, doomed adolescent romances go, this one’s not that bad.
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days
Director: Michihito Fujii • Writer: Michihito Fujii
Starring: Greg Hsu, Kaya Kiyohara, Chang Hsiao-hsuan, Shunsuke Michieda, Haru Kuroki
Japan / Taiwan • 2hrs 4mins
Opens Hong Kong April 4 • I
Grade: B
The various people and places that put in appearances in prolific writer-director Michihito Fujii’s 18x2 Beyond Youthful Days | 青春·18 x 2 日本慢車流浪記 don’t truly matter in the grand scheme of things. The latest in the string of backwards-facing adolescent romances in which two impossibly soft-focused pretty people remember their long lost/dead/married to someone else (but usually dead) first love is exactly what you expect it to be. 18x2 is cut from the same very large, very thick cloth as every other film like it – co-star Kaya Kiyohara’s One Second Ahead, One Second Behind, its remake, Love at First Lie, Let Me Eat Your Pancreas, My Best Friend’s Breakfast, whatever the fuck – but to its credit it’s not quite as insipid as most, and the girl (these are not women) has a bit more agency than is normally bestowed on characters like them. It’s the same nonsense, but in fairness LOTS of people like this nonsense; that is not by any means judgement. You should see half the crap I watch. If ever there were an entirely subjective sub-genre, it’s the Japanese/Taiwanese adolescent romance. That and maybe the rom-com. If you’re willing to put up with the form’s conventions, you’ll be delighted with 18x2. If you can’t, what can I say other than “Run!”
We meet Taiwanese video game designer Jimmy (Greg Hsu Kuang-han, The Invisible Guest, Marry My Dead Body) just as his Japanese board of directors votes to wrest control of his company from him. After a little freak-out, Jimmy does some reflecting and decides that 18 years after he met his first great love, Ami (Kiyohara), he’s going to take a well-earned vacation, decompress from the ordeal of office politics and visit her homeland, specifically the snowy far north. We learn how they met through flashbacks to the magical summer that brought them together. Flashbacks, you say? How cutting edge for a film like this. Anyway, Ami was on her own quest at the time, as a Japanese tourist out to see the world and possibly document what she saw in paintings. She turned up at the cut-rate Tainan karaoke Jimmy worked at, looking for a job after losing her wallet. The karaoke staff take her under their wing and embrace her art. But she has a boyfriend she keeps calling. Or does she?
Jimmy recalls a moment in he and Ami’s burgeoning relationship every time he makes a new friend on his JR-based adventure: Koji (Shunsuke Michieda), an enthusiastic student, an izakaya owner (Joseph Chang Hsiao-hsuan, Fantasy • World) also from Tainan, a PC room hostess (Haru Kuroki) who helps him in his commitment to release a paper lantern at a festival. It also happens when he recognises a moment from a game, movie (Shunji’s Iwai’s genre-creating Love Letter looms large, really large) or song he and Ami bonded over. Somehow, Fujii manages to keep the inevitable and wholly predictable turn their kinda sorta summer romance takes a “secret” until Act III. You will not be shocked.
The distinct lack of awkward “Mmmph!” and “Soooooooo…kaaaaaa?” goes a long way to making Jimmy and Ami watchable in 18x2, a crucial factor given how rote the rest of the story is. (Binary) Gender-swapping the less emotionally intelligent character – Jimmy’s the immature, inarticulate klutz this time around – immediately makes Ami more empathetic. Also rote? The actual filmmaking. Fujii has a boatload of television credits to his name, and the conventional construction and almost baked-in commercial breaks (it’s a harmless Cat I, so coming soon to anything not HBO) demonstrate that. There’s nothing wrong with being skilled in TV direction; have you seen some TV lately? I’m just saying epic (dear god, over two hours), bittersweet, decades-spanning romance could use some epic visuals. But 18x2 Beyond Youthful Days is solidly built, Hsu and Kiyohara have a comfortable dynamic, and it ticks all the boxes it needs to in order to qualify as an ado-rom™©. Back off, that’s mine now. — DEK