Fridae

Romcoms generally drive film reviewers up the wall – they're far more formulaic, predictable, and full of lazy writing than most other film genres. Perhaps we now lack the talent in sophisticated screenwriting, direction, and acting in romcoms (Yes, there was an era in the 40s where they were very well-made and clever. See the works of Ernst Lubitsch and Preston Sturges, for instance) but these terrible romcoms keep getting made year after year!

Conversely, the anti-romcom is a darned difficult thing to make. How to make a film that parodies and subverts the genre? That takes skill and an understanding of the genre that currently does not exist in Hollywood, at least not in abundance. One may point to Annie Hall and (500) Days of Summer as the most memorable anti-romcoms but then the list trails off.

Though one may quibble about its execution, First Time could well be one of the first Asian attempts at an anti-romcom. A girl with a life-threatening disorder falls head over heels for a long-lost classmate, who woos her with a fairytale romance so saccharine sweet, it defies even cinematic logic. As it turns out, he's an actor hired by the girl's overly protective mother to give her the best experience money and maternal love can buy. After all, life is short and people need to have their dreams.

Yet despite all that is set up for it in its premise, you won't be quite correct to expect a film that both affirms and subverts how romantic dramas play out, that parodies and skewers the drama dating couples put each other through. All that does happen after a fashion but the flaw of the film is how it plays it as an annoyingly saccharine straight romance for far too long before it offers the twist, Korean style. And when the twist comes, the film, as though cognizant of the fact that even in Taiwan, there isn't any screenwriting talent to deal with what its script demands, runs away from the natural satirical punchlines that a twist should lead to.

What remains in the end is a technically well-shot film between two good looking actors making cute faces at each other. Despite all the promises in its premise, First Time is really an old-fashioned romantic dramedy that doesn't break out of the mould despite threatening to.