No country for old kids

English>>Life & Culture >> Entertainment

Editor's Pick

(Global Times) 09:15, August 07, 2013

Email|Print|Comments

twitter

facebook

Sina Microblog

Promotional poster for Young Style (file photo)

College life has been trendy in the cinema this year. The word "youth" has also become a popular topic. But even though many of this year's box-office hits such as So Young directed by Zhao Wei, Tiny Times directed by Guo Jingming and American Dreams in China directed by Peter Chan were generally placed in the category of "youth film," they were hardly comparable to the typical teen films that audiences are familiar with.

Instead, Tiny Times is actually a fashion drama that has few real portrayals of young people's life today, while So Young and American Dreams in China both target an older audience.

It was not until last month when Singing When We Were Young directed by Liu Juan came out that the so-called "youth film" category finally had something that could truly fit into this genre.

This month, director Liu Jie brings another teen film to the cinema: Young Style. With the given topic set by China Film Group to shoot a real Chinese teen film about taking the gaokao (national college entrance examination), director Liu's Young Style won Best Actor and Best Film at the 16th Shanghai International Film Festival's CCTV Film Channel awards.

No proper teen films

Liu Jie has been famous for his art house films such as Deep in the Clouds, Judge and Courthouse on Horseback, which won Best Film at the Venice Horizons Award in 2006. Young Style is seen as his transformation toward more market-oriented films.

Liu once expressed to the media that when he took the project there was no proper teen film about the life of today's Chinese high school students. And after those commercially successful "youth films," with their mixed level of quality, expectations for Liu's work are relatively high. Meanwhile, others already feel aesthetically tired of seeing similar elements in various films over and over again.

Film critic Gao Yuanzhi finds that the wave of films about campus life is due to the fact that over half of moviegoers were born in the 1980s and 1990s, and producers are now viewing them as an increasingly important target audience.

【1】【2】