青春18x2 通往有你的旅程 (18×2 Beyond Youthful Days) is an 2024 film out of Taiwan and Japan. 18×2 Beyond Youthful Days is an joint production between a Taiwanese and Japanese film companies. The movie stars Greg Hsu and Kaya Kiyohara. Lots of famous folks from both Taiwan and Japan make cameo appearances. The movie had a limited release in Taiwan back in February.
Greg Hsu plays Jimmy, a recent high school graduate working at a Tainan karaoke bar for the summer before his college life starts. Ami is from Japan, back packing through Taiwan. After losing her wallet, she seeks employment at the karaoke bar to make enough to get back home. Jimmy takes an immediate liking to Ami. Will Jimmy and Ami make it?
This movie is a very typical artsy style film from Japan and Taiwan. Pretty slow in most of the movie so you can contemplate life with the leads. The movie seeks to be both style driven as well as story driven. But more importantly, I feel these movies promote that life is not a straight line, there will be struggles, and how do you move on from there.
This movie was very beautiful. It has some very good train ride scenery of both Taiwan and Japan. The storyline has some unique elements, but was a pretty straight forward "love" story.
I caught this via Netflix about a month ago and rewatched it again recently.
