What is with the flashbacks, Asia? Are you really that desperate to re-live the not-so-glory days? Apparently, whether your plot of Eastern past experienced a cultural revolution or not, you wax nostaligic for youth lost, which brings us to the flashback du jour: Our Times, the overinvolved tale of a delightful Chinese doormat.
Taiwanese office manager and single lady Truly Lin (Joe Chen) is neither quite sycophant, nor toadie, but she sure isn’t up to claiming personal space from an overbearing boss, and her 
spinelessness comes at the expense of pouty underlings. As Truly reflects upon a bad business day, she goes to bed and wakes as an awkward teen (Vivian Sung). Was this a swap or a memory? I didn’t know for a while. It’s a memory. And her failed high school love life has not a single thing to do with with present day dilemma … which makes me wonder why this film was told in flashback.
The younger version is Truly wanting – the kind of gal with big glasses, unkempt hair, a painfully shy outlook, and completely smitten with BMOC, Yang (Dino Lee). Helpless to do anything when Yang is bullied by 1950s greaser and rival TaiYu (Darren Wang), Truly forwards a chain letter to “curse” TaiYu. It takes TaiYu all of three seconds to figure out how the anonymous letter found him, and he retaliates by, how shall I put this?, showing Truly a good time. He busts her balls, so to speak, and uses her fear of the situation to make her a slave. But this doesn’t last, and, let’s face it, Truly needs somebody to pay attention to her. So, regardless of how it looks, it’s a win-win.
Yes, it is a tiresome tale – the mousy girl and the rebel. Essentially an Asian John Hughes film, we saw this basic plot last year in She’s Dating the Gangster. The gangster is always far more interesting, of course, than the BMOC. They always are *sigh* A pretty good gang 
fight at a roller rink is interrupted by the clock. Gotta hand it to the Chinese – not a whole lot of cutures have street gangs who actually interrupt thuggery to “go study for finals.”
Our Times is essentially a romance. My rule for romances holds regardless of time, place, age or culture – if you find yourself wanting to be falling for the players, it will work. If you don’t, it won’t. Despite the awkward screenplay, I found the former was the case, Truly.
This is the fourth Asian film I’ve seen in the past year in which a person has traveled back to his/her youth. Outside Indian films, I don’t catch more than a dozen Asian films a year, if that. The constant desire to re-live the past is more than a little disturbing – Are folks from Nepal to the Sea of Japan constantly aching to be younger again? Are there over a billion Asians regretting the decisions they’ve made in life? Or is this just a cheap way to pander to movie-consuming youths while pretending the trend is about adults? I tell you this much – I always thought the best part of being Asian was that once you got to a certain age, everybody respected you. Most Asian cultures demand it. Sure, I’m old and broken, but dudes, it was worth it; nobody gives me shit any more. To find aging holds no natural incentive in these cultures is, well, a bit of a downer.
♪I was in love with a big b-ball player
Back in high school
He didn’t know that I existed
It was kind of cruel
Naturally I cursed his hoodlum rival
Thought it might get some sway
Backfired ugly as you might have guessed
And now this price I pay
(Alle)gory days, they’ll make you cry
Ah the pain, got something in my eye
Bore-y gaze, Hoary ways♫
Not Rated, 134 Minutes
D: Yu Shan Chen
W: Yung-Ting Tseng
Genre: Memories of pain …
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Sugar-coated reflection surfers
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Authoritarians
♪ Parody inspired by “Glory Days”
