"You Are the Apple of My Eye," a teen romance by writer and director Giddens Ko in 2011, became a hit not only in his native Taiwan but across Asia. Seeing it at the Udine Far East Film Festival, I was struck by the raunchiness of the humor, starting with a classroom masturbation contest, and the originality of the story, which was based on Ko's semi-autobiographical novel about his long, on-again/off-again relationship with a cute, hard-working high school classmate. "Only in Taiwan," I thought.
Not really. There is now a Japanese remake, directed by Yasuo Hasegawa, that closely follows the original. The gags remain low-brow, though the masturbation scene got the heave-ho. And the film still opens with the classmate marrying another guy, as the hero and his buddies, guests at her wedding, look on with resignation.
This gives the rest of the story a bittersweet air, like starting a medical melodrama with the hero on his deathbed, reminiscing about happier days. And yet the film ends on a raucous up-note, proclaiming what most of us already know: The end of romance can be the beginning of friendship — and maturity.