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IMDbPro

That Day, on the Beach

Original title: Hai tan de yi tian
  • 1983
  • Not Rated
  • 2h 46m
IMDb RATING
7.6/10
1.3K
YOUR RATING
Sylvia Chang in That Day, on the Beach (1983)
Drama

Two friends who haven't seen each other for thirteen years reunite. One is a successful concert pianist just back from a European tour and the other has just started a new business.Two friends who haven't seen each other for thirteen years reunite. One is a successful concert pianist just back from a European tour and the other has just started a new business.Two friends who haven't seen each other for thirteen years reunite. One is a successful concert pianist just back from a European tour and the other has just started a new business.

  • Director
    • Edward Yang
  • Writers
    • Nien-Jen Wu
    • Edward Yang
  • Stars
    • Sylvia Chang
    • Ming Hsu
    • Lieh Lee
  • See production, box office & company info
  • IMDb RATING
    7.6/10
    1.3K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Edward Yang
    • Writers
      • Nien-Jen Wu
      • Edward Yang
    • Stars
      • Sylvia Chang
      • Ming Hsu
      • Lieh Lee
    • 4User reviews
    • 7Critic reviews
  • See production, box office & company info
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 win & 4 nominations

    Photos434

    That Day, on the Beach (1983)
    That Day, on the Beach (1983)
    That Day, on the Beach (1983)
    That Day, on the Beach (1983)
    That Day, on the Beach (1983)
    That Day, on the Beach (1983)
    That Day, on the Beach (1983)
    That Day, on the Beach (1983)
    That Day, on the Beach (1983)
    That Day, on the Beach (1983)
    That Day, on the Beach (1983)
    That Day, on the Beach (1983)

    Top cast

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    Sylvia Chang
    Sylvia Chang
    • Jiali
    Ming Hsu
    Ming Hsu
    Lieh Lee
    Lieh Lee
    David Mao
    David Mao
    • Cheng Dewei
    • (as Xuewei Mao)
    Terry Hu
    Terry Hu
    • Tan Weiqing
    Kun-Hou Chen
    Hsiao-Hsien Hou
    Hsiao-Hsien Hou
    Hou-Tao Hsiao
    Hou-Tao Hsiao
    Hsiao-Yeh
    Shu-Chen Hsu
    Yu-Hua Huang
    I-Chen Ko
    I-Chen Ko
    Meng-Lin Li
    Shu-Chen Li
    Shu-Chen Li
    Rui-Yang Lin
    Rui-Yang Lin
    Wen-Cheng Lo
    Fang Mei
    Fang Mei
    Chun Nan
    • Director
      • Edward Yang
    • Writers
      • Nien-Jen Wu
      • Edward Yang
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

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    Did you know

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    • Quotes

      Jiali: So we've read all these books and taken test after test, but nobody's taught us how to handle the big questions like this. In every book and every movie, it's always the same "They all marry and live happily ever after". But after that? Nobody told us.

    • Connections
      References Juliet of the Spirits (1965)

    User reviews4

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    7/10
    a resounding testament of an auteur's first step into his vocation and heralds a rosy future in the offing
    The feature debut of lionized Taiwanese New Wave director Edward Yang, THAT DAY, ON THE BEACH enterprisingly surveys the shifting sand of Taiwan sociology at its time (namely the 1970s when women are awaken by an urge to modernize their roles in the society), through the microcosm of a young woman's checkered life and her resultant transmogrification.

    A frame story begins in the present time, an accomplished pianist Weiqing (Terry Hu) returns to her motherland Taiwan for the first time after 13 years abroad for a one-night-only solo concert and dithers about the invitation to meet Jiali (Sylvia Chang), the younger sister of her ex-boyfriend Jiaseng (Tso Ming-Hsiang). Finally, Weiqing cancels the afternoon press conference and meets Jiali inside a coffee shop, after exchanging courtesies, the narrative rewinds back to the college years when they first met.

    Yang rejects a more conventionally chronological narrative and jump-cuts between different time-frames according to the subjects of Jiali and Weiqing's laconic conversation, with only Jiali's varying coiffures as signifiers (short-haired, curly, fringed or schoolgirl style) of its specific time. The chunk of the story happens during Weiqing's absent years, after she is jilted by Jiaseng, who yields to an arranged marriage organized his father, and soon takes up the latter's baton of their family's private clinic.

    Affected by her brother's choice, when come to marriage, Jiali goes the opposite, sneaking out of her parents' at night and marrying her college boyfriend Cheng Dewei (David Mao) of her own accord, but conjugal rift eventually catches up with them, aka. the irreconcilable conflict between a business-thrusting husband and a love-wanting housewife and the life as she knows it, is forever changed on "the day on the beach", when Dewei mysteriously vanishes without any warning.

    Naturally we are intrigued by Dewei's determinate whereabouts, is he dead by suicide or furtively decamps abroad with his company's money? Yang deliberately keeps the answer at bay, as audience will realize then, either outcome makes no difference for Jiali, she is alone again, and offered a new lease on life if she can live down the past and find her feet. This female-emancipation leitmotif reveals Yang's deeply humane aspect of his view on life, in line with a keen eye on atmospheric burnishing and a propensity for unobtrusive long-takes, Yang's artistry has already shaped an incipient mold in his first, ambitious undertaking.

    On a less celebratory note, the film suffers mostly for its bloated length, a 166-minute is a stretch for the elliptical modality in Yang's spatio-temporal leaping storytelling, which is further exacerbated by the cast's stilted diction of a faintly histrionic screenplay (proffered by the celebrated writer Wu Nien-Jen nonetheless), its dialogue, more often than not, oscillating between mawkish to forced poetic, it brings about a detached un-realness to a Chinese ear (it is lesser a problem for subtitle readers though), a rookie's mistake as the symptom would be massively ameliorated in Yang's later works.

    The multi-hyphenate Sylvia Chang barely reaches her 30s, so it is a proper time for her to straddle the 13-year age gap from a callow college student to a mature business woman and she is most eloquent in those wordless, emotion-betraying close-ups, whereas a prepossessing Terry Hu proves herself to be a true screen beauty of her time, to a point it almost makes her character's abandonment like an achingly preposterous joke. In the main, THAT DAY, ON THE BEACH is a resounding testament of an auteur's first step into his vocation and heralds a rosy future in the offing (ill-fatedly Yang died in 2007, aged 59, with only 7 feature films under his belt).
    helpful•6
    1
    • lasttimeisaw
    • Jan 24, 2018

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    Details

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    • Release date
      • April 11, 1983 (Taiwan)
    • Country of origin
      • Taiwan
    • Languages
      • Mandarin
      • German
    • Also known as
      • 海灘的一天
    • Production company
      • Central Motion Pictures
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    • Gross worldwide
      • $37,482
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

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    • Runtime
      2 hours 46 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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