Moreover, dark as Better Days gets – and it is often an uneasy watch because of its delicately-handled themes – there's still a hopeful story about how honesty and courage and fix even the most broken systems.
Better Days(少年的你)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
China · 2019
2h 15m
Director Derek Tsang
Starring Zhou Dongyu, Jackson Yee, Huang Jue, Yin Fang
Genre Drama
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Nian is a bullied high-schooler focused on preparing for the Chinese gaokao, the exam that will decide her future. Soon after she befriends Bei, a small-time criminal, her nemesis is mysteriously murdered, and she realizes that while Bei solves her old problems, he creates new ones in this drama based on a YA novel.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
Though not very subtle in presenting its thesis, the story is generally suspenseful and well-told by young HK actor and director Tsang (Soul Mate).
In Derek Kwok Cheung Tsang’s gripping, superbly performed melodrama — a deeply moving if occasionally overwrought exposé of bullying in the acutely competitive academic pressure cooker of a Chinese high school — it’s hard to imagine she can be nostalgic for her own school days.
Better Days may slide into somewhat hollow artfulness, but it’s hard not to be moved by its genuine concerns.
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