《少年的你》

Starring: Zhou Dongyu, Jackson Yee, Fang Yin, Huang Jue, Wu Yue

Director: Derek Kwok-Cheung Tsang

ORIGINALLY scheduled to be released globally in early summer, Derek Tsang’s film — a heartbreaking tale of bullying and suicide in a Chinese high school — has obliterated all other titles in China with a US$81.5 million three-day debut since its opening Oct. 25, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway.

Globally, “Better Days” bested the worldwide haul of Disney’s “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” by a few million dollars and Warner Bros.’ “Joker” by about US$20 million, according to Comscore. In China, “Better Days” grossed US$8.6 million in the first weekend.

“Growing up is like diving. Don’t think, just close your eyes, and jump in,” a character says in this brutal and harrowing coming-of-age drama. But if that swirling sea that leads to adulthood is full of craggy rocks and violent riptides, you may just be pulled under. That’s the situation in which loner high school senior Chen Nian (Zhou Dongyu) finds herself as she readies to take the National College Entrance Exam, or gaokao, China’s grueling, two-day test that will determine her future.

But Chen, a top student, has more on her mind than equations and English conjugation. As the film starts, Hu, the only other student she can even remotely call a friend, has committed suicide, leaping to her death from an upper floor of the school, landing in a broken, bloody heap on the bricks below. A victim of relentless bullying, Hu is the object of one final humiliation as her classmates gather around her body, phones aloft, taking photos and posting online.

Chen is the only one to have the decency to cover the body, a simple act of kindness that turns her into the next target of the students’ abuse and harassment. It doesn’t help that things aren’t great at home either. She’s being raised by a single mom who loves her but who makes her living selling illicit goods, meaning she’s always trying to stay one step ahead of creditors and cops.

Of course, the homes of her classmates aren’t much better. Parents are either absent (working in far-flung jobs, seeing their children once a year), abusive (a father slaps his daughter in front of the entire school after she’s suspended) or blind to their children’s bullying behavior.

When combined with the pressure-cooker atmosphere and the teachers’ cold authoritarianism — “Score 600! Get into the university of your dreams!,” goes one school chant — the students feel their only escape is to ace the gaokao and flee to college. And, if some of the “weaker” kids get bullied in the process, whatever. This is a world where a sneering “Teacher said third-tier colleges were her best hope” is the worst insult.

So when Chen meets Xiao Bei (Jackson Yee), a dropout and all-around low-rent hood, she persuades him to protect her against the mean girls (and boys) who’ve made her life “The Lord of the Flies” with Chinese school uniforms. At this point, it seems as if “Better Days,” based on a popular online novel by Jiu Yuexi, will become a standard-issue revenge tale.

But that’s not where it goes, at least not completely. It takes surprising turns, evolving into a love story, of sorts, between two lost young people who feel they are always being watched — CCTV cameras are everywhere — but remain, in the larger sense, unseen.

Zhou (“Soul Mate”) is a revelation, able to express a range of emotions behind a veil of wounded impassivity. A scene where Zhou and Yee say nothing to each other speaks volumes.

“Better Days” is handsomely shot and has an affecting piano and orchestral score, but that beauty can’t cover the ugliness Tsang is exposing of bullying, in general, and of this element of Chinese society, in particular.

Three years ago Tsang made “Soul Mate,” an enchanting tale about female friendship that offered an engrossing look at modern, urban China. Yet, that film isn’t quite adequate preparation for the emotional wallop of “Better Days.”

The movie is now being screened in Shenzhen.

(SD-Agencies)