Secret

Ye Xianglun arrives at a music school and finds a girl called Lu Xiaoyu playing in an old piano room. She only ever appears there, nobody else knows her, and she is not in the school records. The answer to the secret is in the piece she plays. Jay Chou directs, co-writes, stars and composed the music, in his first film as director. Chou was the biggest name in Chinese language pop at the time and this was his move into cinema. The result is more serious than expected: it begins like a teen romance and turns into science fiction built on time, and in the last section every earlier scene acquires a second meaning. The best known passage is the piano duel. Two students playing in turn in the school music room, a scene that went into circulation independently of the film and spent years among the most watched musical sequences online. It was shot at Tamkang High School, which Chou himself attended, and the school became a place people visit afterwards. Much of the emotional effect comes from the music; the main theme Chou wrote is as well known as the film. Who it is for: viewers who like Asian teen romance, piano music, and light science fiction about time. Who it is not for: anyone looking for logic. The time mechanics do not hold together and the film makes no attempt to explain them.