Khue-Guan, a deliveryman living in a cheap apartment, dreams of making it big one day. He happens upon a teenage runaway, Tsing-Bi, and entices her to work in a nightclub to make money for him. Meanwhile, the nightclub hostess, Giok-Sian, pays for Khue-Guan’s company but keeps a no strings attached relationship. When Tsing-Bi becomes pregnant with Khue-Guan’s child, she asks him to marry her but is coldly rejected. Khue-Guan proposes to Giok-Sian only to be sneered at. In the choice between love and money, Khue-Guan must decide what he truly wants.

Dangerous Youth (1969) is perhaps the most avant-garde and piercing Taiwanese language film that exists today. Through the relationships between a prostitute, a pimp and a procuress, the film presents a capitalist society in moral decay: People are selling their bodies, buying sexual pleasure, and no one is “the good guy” in the traditional sense. The image of speeding motorcycles recurring throughout the film come to symbolize the dangerous, derailing of youth. With its unapologetic depiction of physical desires coupled with New Wave aesthetics, Dangerous Youth is a classic of Taiwanese cinema.

Available Formats: DVD, Blu-ray and DCP