A youth story follows Yen, Tang, and their group of friends, united by loyalty for each other and passion for the same baseball team, through their last year in high school. Like most teenage boys, they skip class, fool around, and go watching baseball games together. An implicit love-triangle emerges among Tang, Yen, and Yen’s girlfriend. It’s the first crack which will break up the unity of the group. Everything starts to fall apart when Yen falls into a coma due to a motorcycle accident. A sense of guilt and shirked responsibility make one drift away from another. With the breaking scandal of their favorite baseball team, whose members are involved in game-gambling, their friendship dissolves.

It is Tom Shu-Yu Lin’s first feature film, full of touching memory of golden years of youth. Main settings of the film are all in Hsinchu, where the boys attend high school and hang around. Such a setting-choice also echoes then literary tendency of “Writing the Local.” Hsinchu, nicknamed “City of Winds,” is famous for its fierce and freezing winds in winter. The film’s title, literally “Nine Falling Winds,” signifies the nine characters’ pathos and paths. It implicitly points to the “Sturm und Drang” of German Romanticism as well. Thus, it’s a typical initiation story, showing rebellious teenagers, riot and revolt, love and hate, loyalty and betrayal in close circle, and full of blood. The film focuses mainly on boys, emphasizing their masculinity and male-bonding. However, the two girls play the negative role of undermining the solidarity of the boys, much as Yoko Ono incurred blame for splitting up the Beatles. The narrative parallels the rise and fall of Taiwan’s Professional Baseball League in the 90s, which also implies Taiwan’s collective disappointment at the first turnover of power between political parties at the turn of the millennium.

DVD source：Taiwan Cinema Toolkit, Ministry of Culture, R.O.C.