A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

Cast

• Chang Chen Xiao Si'r
• Lisa Yang Ming
• Chang Kuo-chu Father
• Elaine Jin Yan-Ling Mother
• Wang Chuan Eldest Sister
• Chang Han Elder Brother
• Chiang Hsiu-Chiung Middle Sister
• Stephanie Lai Youngest Sister
• Tan Chih-Kang Ma
• Wang Chi-tsan Cat
• Lawrence Ko Airplane
• Chang Ming-Hsin Underpants
• Jung Chun-Lung Bomber
• Hui-Kuo Chou Tiger
• Chi-Chung Liu Hefty
• Ching-Hsiang Ho Animal
• Chang-Ta Tsai Tiger's Buddy
• Tsung-Ming Lee Tiger's Buddy
• Hung-Ming Lin Honey
• Wang Bosen Deuce

Crew

Director

Edward Yang

Director of Photography

Chang Hui-kung

Director of Photography

Longyu Zhang

Editor

Chen Po-Wen

Original Music Composer

Zhang Hongda

Producer

Yu Wei-Yen

Writer

Edward Yang

Writer

Yen Hung-ya

Writer

Lai Mingtang

Writer

Alex Yang

Details

IMDb

tt0101985

TMDB

15804

Keywords

• 1960s
• baseball bat
• based on true story
• bitter
• coming of age
• first love
• gang
• high school
• juvenile delinquent
• murder
• slow cinema
• taipei
• taiwan
• teenage boy
• teenage protagonist
• tragedy
• troubled teen
• youth gang

Videos

• Restoration Spotlight: A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY Featurette
• Tony Rayns on How Edward Yang Became a Filmmaker | Criterion Commentary Featurette
• A Brighter Summer Day Trailer Trailer
• A Brighter Summer Day (1991) Trailer | Bande-annonce | De Edward Yang Trailer

Reviews

CinemaSerf · ★ 7 · 2026-06-03

This isn't so much a drama as an intimate observational documentary following the lives of people recently arrived on the island of Taiwan after the Chinese communist party took control of the mainland. There is still a considerable degree of militaristic life amongst the population, and the secret police are never far from the minds of the adults whilst the adolescents come to terms with their own, quite often gang-related, issues too. Those are not, initially at any rate, gangs in the violent sense of New York's "Jets" and "Sharks", but they are just as important in providing a degree of structure, identity and security for a rootless youth who are as uncertain of their future as they are of their past. With more than an oblique nod to "Romeo and Juliet", we meet "Si'r" (Chang Chen) who has a curiously ambivalent relationship with "Ming" (Lisa Yang), with both affiliated to opposing gangs at their high school. On the face of it, you might be forgiven for thinking that we are now in for something soapily teen-angsty, but by using a combination of more standard and more subtle photography, we start to find ourselves more immersed in the lives of these kids as they grow up and find their own identies all against a backdrop that sees their parents' generation coming to terms with a constantly simmering threat of political and social upheaval that leaves no-one safe from the authorities determined to discover any potential communist activists or sympathisers. There isn't so much a pace here as a series of breathing exercises. Some of it hairs along rapidly and occasionally quite violently, some of it is much more cerebral and discursive and some of it - just like life itself - is as dull to watch as it presumably is to live through. This also isn't only a sensitively filmed critique on the coming of ages of people, but also of a nation state and it is not without some elements of joy - though possibly not humour, as is takes it's time to unfold in a fashion that has an unusual and characterful authenticity to it. Like any film that approaches four hours in duration, it does have it's fallow moments but on the whole the performances provide us with measured and engaging characters and if you can get a chance to watch it on a big screen, it's play out a bit like a folk-song lyric Joan Baez might have sung.

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