Xia tian de wei ba

The director gave us an entertaining yet refreshing story about the innocent youth. The first love of boys and girls is entwined with adults' earthly stories. There is no value judgement from the director to instruct you the right and wrong, which allows the audience to enjoy the movie with an objective and moderate perspective. Youth is innocent and painful, and yet is to be replaced by adultness, which may drive away friendship, fairness, pure love, etc. And in this story, the later, no doubt, spoils some boy's or girl's first love, as the life teach us a lesson now and then. But everyone have no choice but to grow up.

While this small-scale Taiwanese drama about a group of teenagers may not offer anything drastically new, it's such a pleasant and enjoyable little film that it deserves to be more widely seen.

The story centers around four kids. Yvette, who serves as the lead, is suffering from heart condition and as a result is taking a break from school. She spends her time playing guitar and just hanging out with three friends (who have problems of their own) at a remote yard aimlessly killing time. Things happen, but there's not much of a plot to speak of and yet it never gets boring. What makes this work is its wonderful, laid-back mood, which in essence is very much like those lazy, care-free summer days the film depicts. Things move on at a leisurely, but steady pace, accompanied by a lovely music, pleasing visuals and on top of that the young cast makes most out of the admittedly not-that-fleshed-out parts.

However, I'd guess, what ultimately will either make or brake the film for you, depending on your preferences, is its tone. Most recent teen films tend to aim at gritty realism or something overtly glamorized, sexy, slick and shamelessly artificial, but Summer's Tail goes for a slightly romanticized and nostalgic take on the "good old days". Some will find it refreshing, others might call it hokey. I obviously didn't have a problem with it and thought this was an utterly charming, simple movie.

Summer's Tail doesn't have any real conclusion.. In the end, this is just one summer in their life. The kids are growing up, slowly, but surely and life goes on, enjoy it while you're around. Should you ever have the chance to see this, I recommend giving it a shot, you might be pleasantly surprised. I know I was.