moviefreak

This 2007 Taiwanese movie was really not what I expected (in a good way). The other title is also “The Secret That Cannot Be Told”. At first glance, I thought it was just a regular boy/girl love story in an arts school. After the plot progressed for a while, I thought it was a love story between a boy and a ghost. Boy was I wrong!!! But I won’t say anymore since it’ll ruin everything he he…

The Story:

Ye Xianglun (Jay Chou - a famous musician who’s also the co-writer of this movie) enters Danjiang Secondary Arts School to study music. The first day he comes to school, he meets the mysterious Lu Xiaoyu (Kwai Lun-mei). He heard her play a beautiful piece of music, so he’s very curious about her. They fall in love at first sight and they keep meeting each other. They’d play the piano together and he’d take her home with his bike and she teaches him how to play the pieace of music that he had heard the first day they met. One weird thing about her is that sometimes she doesn’t come to school for days. Every time Xiaoyu throws a disappearing act, Xianglun misses her more.

There’s another girl in the class who also likes Xianglun. Her name is Qing Yi (Alice Tzeng). So in the beginning it seems that there’ll be a love triangle. One time after Xiaoyu disappears from class for days (she claims that she has asthma, so sometimes she has to rest at home), she gets more and more jealous of Qing Yi.

One day Xianglun passes a note to Xiaoyu in the middle of a lesson, but the note actually reaches Qing Yi. So Qing Yi comes to the music hall to meet Xianglun and since Xianglun thinks that she’s Xiaoyu, he kisses her. Xiaoyu, who’s standing outside the room, is angry and she runs back home. She also refuses to meet him when he waits for her in front of her apartment’s gate. Xianglun keeps on waiting outside for days, but to no avail. One woman who lives in the same apartment complex tells him that Xiaoyu has quit going to school, so Xianglun doesn’t bother coming to wait for her anymore.

By now five months have passed by and it’s graduation day. Everybody in the school knows that on graduation day, the old music hall will be demolished and they’ll build a new music hall there. What happens on graduation day? Will Xianglun meet Xiaoyu again? Why is she so mysterious? What kind of secret does she have?

Here’s the piano battle between two students in the movie. It’s HOT HOT HOT!!!!

Note:

This movie actually reminds me of “Somewhere in Time“. I think the first half of the story was rather puzzling (it could have been made more engaging), but after I got more explanations on what had happened and the tension kept on rising until it reached the peak and at the end of the movie, I felt a HUGE SURGE of relief. For that and also some beautiful special effects and WONDERFUL piano performances, I’ll give this movie a 7.5 stars out of 10.

I watched this movie here, though the quality isn’t perfect, but at least I got to watch it for free ha ha ha…