There is something refreshingly conventional about The Parades director Michihito Fujii’s romantic drama 18×2 Beyond Youthful Days, despite its needlessly clumsy title.

At a time when the genre has become a convoluted mess of high-concept notions looking to reinvent the adolescent love story, this simple tale of a young man exploring his first love’s homeland proves surprisingly effective.

The only curve ball in Fujii’s nostalgia-fuelled tale is that his contemplative protagonist hails from Taiwan, which provides the setting for the film’s numerous flashbacks.

Read my full South China Morning Post review here