Hou Hsiao-hsien 16: Contexts 7 - Dangerous Youth (Hsin Chi, 1969)

https://notesonfilm1.com/2021/06/13/hou-hsiao-hsien-16-contexts-7-dangerous-youth-hsin-chi-1969/ Continuing with our discussion of Hsin Chi films. This time the focus is on DANGEROUS YOUTH. We offer a bit of background on Hsin Chi; discuss how the film is similar to Nagisa Oshima's CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH, Godard's BREATHLESS, BEAT GIRL, and all the motorcycle gang Roger Corman films of the mid-sixties. The film has the thematics and energy of pre-code sex melodramas but surrounded by a rock-pop soundtrack stylised and transformed by foregrounding the sax. DANGEROUS YOUTH is visually inventive, with fascinating compositions, interesting intimations of nudity through shadows, compositions that make the most of the architecture to suggest interior states and external perspectives. The story of a young girl groomed into prostitution for money by the pimp she loves and the richer woman who is pulling his strings, is given sexy, noirish form and fascinating gender politics. Does anyone believe the end?