You Are the Apple of My Eye

Directors: Giddens
Starring: Ko Chen-tung, Michelle Chen, Steven Hao
Rating:

It’s not often that a high-school romantic comedy is distinguished both by emotional honesty and an abundance of masturbation scenes. ‘Bring tissues’ takes on a whole new meaning in You Are the Apple of My Eye, the first film by prolific Taiwanese author Giddens Ko (billed as plain-old Giddens here). Based on the director's own autobiographical novel, it's an entertaining tale of teenage love that never forgets that most adolescent males' first sexual partner is their own paw.

Ching-Teng (Ko Chen-tung) is an academic underachiever who shares his father's penchant for padding around stark naked at home. After he’s caught spanking the monkey during class, he’s thrown in with Chia-yi (Michelle Chen), the honors student who all his friends seem to fancy – even if Ching-Teng himself considers her ‘only slightly prettier than the other girls.’ A quick montage later, our hero is now a committed textbook geek himself, and romance appears to be blooming between the two young 'uns.

Though these scenes are exuberantly played and genuinely sweet in places, there’s little to distinguish them from countless other high-school romcoms. Where You Are the Apple of My Eye breaks from the template is in sticking with its cast of characters (the fat one, the aspiring cartoonist, the one who keeps getting boners) long after they graduate. This requires a fair amount of skipping forward in time, making for an uneven and occasionally meandering watch, but the pay-off is a bittersweet denouement that considers puppy love for what it really is. Too bad that Giddens had to spoil things with an utterly gratuitous flashback sequence, but there’s still much to like here.

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