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BLUE GATE CROSSING Consider adolescence: your body is unfamiliar and desire emanates from every pore. Really, you're not much different from a lumpen octopus submerged in its own excess facial oils. While your exterior is a showcase for unwieldy growths, childhood curiosities are swallowed up by a singular obsession: how to rub your needy tentacle against the epidermis of your beloved without getting shamed back to your dark hole. Luckily BLUE GATE CROSSING is much more cinematic than that - shimmering between lush and rosy, a warm dream state with desire heavy like humidity in every scene. What seems spare turns unsparing as a kiss from one's teenage crush gains gravity to become one's sole reason for being. Rarely has E.M. Forster's decree to "Only connect" seemed so urgent. Though BLUE GATE CROSSING reminds acutely that this age of innocence cohabited with sharp romantic suffering, director Yee Chi-yen pulls off something else wonderful: he has made a movie about teenage desire that treats it with the quiet dignity we probably wished we had when that embarrassing tentacle unfurled itself from our changing bodies like an extra limb. At any age, tackling desire like this would be triumph indeed. Rarely have reveries been so sure-footed, so plangent yet triumphant. B+ | ||