The Boys from Fengkuei (Film)

1983. Dir: Hou Hsiao-hsien. Scr: Chu Tien-wen. Cin: Chen Kunhou.



Context:

• Place within the TNC: The film is one of the first and most important early films of the New Cinema, coming shortly after the two omnibus films that set it off as a movement. In these early years, there was a sense of collectiveness and camaraderie among the group of filmmakers and screenwriters, who collaborated and influenced each other (e.g. the ideas board at Edward Yang's house which all could write on and take inspiration from). It was at this time that Edward Yang, Chang Yi, Ko I-chen, and the other young filmmakers who, unlike Hou, had been trained abraod in the USA and were more theoretically-minded, opened Hou's cinematic horizons. Together they watched many classic European art films, and Hou could not help be affected by these strange 'new' films he was experiencing for the first time. He has spoken of how they forced him to question his way of filmmaking, which previously had been more instinctive and empirical for him. Boys from Fengkuei is therefore in part a response to the influences and theoretical possibilities Hou observed and absorbed from this sudden widening of his cinematic scope, which he translated into a film that is clearly a new direction for him, but still deeply personal. 
• Transition film for Hou: Regarded as the breakthrough film marking Hou's transition from the early commercial musical comedies to a more ambitious and personal cinema, with this stylised social realism. 
• Production info: After having worked at CMPC, original breeding ground of the New Cinema, on The Sandwich Man, Hou decided to take the opportunity to work independently. The film was produced by Evergreen Films Ltd (Hou's own? Self-financed? Find out)
• Origin of project: Hou's mind had clearly by now been opened to cinema's potential for highlighting social reality, after his segment on The Sandwich Man, and the issue of internal migration was obviously of relevance during Taiwan's economic boom. The three youths move from Fengkuei in the Penghu islands (aka the Pescadores) to Taiwan's major southern city, Kaohsiung. Hou had visited Fengkuei some time before making the film and was struck by the landscapes and the people, partly inspiring him to make a film about it.
• Autobiographical elements and future connections: The four delinquent youths' idle lifestyle in Fengkuei, passing by the time playing snooker and getting into fights clearly has some resonance with Hou's own teenage years (which he'd later directly turn into a film in A Time to Live, A Time to Die). This film therefore perhaps represents Hou's first meeting with the potential of memory and autobiography to be fruitful sources for cinema/art. The languorous idle way of life the youths enjoy in the first part of the film also slightly prefigures Goodbye South, Goodbye. The pool halls of this lazy coastal town (as does similarly the impending military service conscription) will also serve as a hallmark of a past, perhaps of Hou's youth, in the 1960s, when it reemerges in Dust in the Wind and the 1960s section of Three Times.

The Film:

• .
• Clip from Rocco and his Brothers at cinema: When the boys sneak into a cinema in the hope of seeing something erotic (they're soon disappointed), the film showing is Luchino Visconti's 1960 Rocco and his Brothers. The choice of film is an interesting one, presumably one that was really shown in Taiwanese cinemas, and links Hou's film to Italian Neo-realism, at least in its second wave (1960 being a transitional year for Italian cinema, with Rocco, L'avventura and La dolce vita.) Rocco is a film about internal Italian migration from the south to the north, during the period of rapid economic expansion in post-war Italy, hence clearly having resonance with the primary subject of Boys from Fengkuei. (Other films 'quoted' withing Hou's films: Drunken Master (1978, Yuen Woo-ping) in this one, Beautiful Duckling (1965, Li Hsing) and a King Hu film (Dragon Inn or Touch of Zen?) in Dust in the Wind. Others?)
• The same scene also has an innovative use of a memory-flashback (a rare or unique? example of subjective interiority in Hou's mature oeuvre.), within the shot-countershot structure of Ah-ching watching Rocco on screen, as the guilt of having wanted to see sex in the movie induces within him another kind of guilt, that towards his father. The scene goes from Ah-ching (S) to Rocco (CS) back to Ah-ching (back to S) and then, with the soundtrack of Rocco still audible, into a memory-flashback of Ah-ching's father being hit by the baseball on the head, an accident we know has left him paralysed.  All this is done unostentatiously but highlights Hou's relationship to seeing, POV and his own take on S/CS structures. The scene also recalls a scene in the later Dust in the Wind, where Ah-yuan's memory/dream/flashback is triggered by shots of a miner on TV.
• The open-wall in abandoned building scene: After the boys, freshly arrived in Kaohsiung and naive as country hicks, are tricked into paying for and going up to an 11th floor 'screening' where the only 'screen' they find is the open wall of this concrete shell of an unfinished building, which has the dimensions of a widescreen aspect ratio, as one of the boys ironically remarks himself when realising their gullible mistake. It frames the city into a screen, which the boys, having paid, now take the time to watch. On a meta-cinematic level, it opens onto the city and hence the real life, symbolising how Hou's films and the TNC was bringing 'real' Taiwanese life onto the screen. It fits also within Hou's burgeoning aesthetic of 'frames-within-frames', and of showing characters looking. It is also a visual joke, and Jia Zhangke, who was greatly moved when he first watched this film. would pay homage to it in Still Life (2006), as would Wang Xiaoshuai in Beijing Bicycle.
• Pan blending past and present in one take: Scene of Ah-ching's homecoming with a pan that incorporates both the present (his father incapacitated and sitting on his chair) and the memory-past (a family meal before the accident...), a scene sort of like the ending of Mizoguchi's Ugetsu.
• Hou's evolving style: Boys from Fengkuei, even more than the segment he directed in The Sandwich Man, begins to show elements of Hou's trademark style: long takes, long shots (in a BFI Q&A he spoke of wanting to always move the camera further back from the characters, in the Fengkuei scenes, in order to take in more of their environment and hence their relationship to it, within the frame --- a tactic which even his cinematographer Chen Kunhou was dubious about) and compositions with blocking and frames-within-frames (doors, windows, etc). It signals the start of his more 'objective' approach to story-telling, wanting to remain at a distance while still allowing a deep empathy for his characters.
• Use of classical music: For the first time Hou uses Western classical music on the soundtrack (e.g. Vivaldi), as he would use Beethoven in his next film, A Summer at Grandpa's. This came about after a suggestion from Edward Yang, as this period (1983-85) marks perhaps the height of the Taiwan New Cinema as a collective movement with ideas being shared communally. As a soundtrack choice it perhaps helps with Hou's desired objective approach, as the music would feel distanced and not immediately relatable to a Taiwanese audience less used to it.
• Hou's cameo: For the first time Hou gave himself a small acting role, as the mahjong-playing perm-haired boyfriend of the sister, living in Kaohsiung.

Reception:

• Won the Golden Montgolfiere (tied with Tunisian film El-haimoune) at the Nantes 3 Continents Festival.

Resources:
http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/cteq/boys_from_fengkuei/