Debuting as an actor back in 2011 with Giddens Ko's “You Are the Apple of My Eye”, Kai Ko has since gone on to become a formidable name in modern Taiwanese cinema, even winning a Golden Horse Award for Best New Performer and a Taipei Film Award for Best Actor over the years. In 2022, he took over the directorial chair from Giddens Ko for “Bad Education”, a script written by Giddens that he was supposed to direct but ended up being Kai Ko's debut behind the camera. In addition to the support of his first director, Kai Ko also had the support of Midi Z, who he worked with on “The Road to Mandalay” and who acts as a producer on “Bad Education”.
Bad Education is screening at Osaka Asian Film Festival
On the night of their graduation from high school, three drunk best friends Chang, Wang and Han decide that, in order for their friendship to stand the test of time, they should tell each other their deepest, darkest secrets. While Chang and Han both have supposed true and very incriminating secrets, rich boy Wang doesn't and they decide it is time for them to make a secret up for him. However, the plan backfires when they choose a gangster for Wang to glass over the head and throw paint at, a decision that is going to get them in a lot more trouble that they bargained for over the course of the night.
Kai Ko's debut follows the three friends as this one bad decision leads to a chain of events beyond their control, making for a fun story set over one wild night. Separated in three distinct chapters, the narrative begins with testing the friendship of the three leads, before beginning to contemplate the nature of good and bad within a person with the latter two chapters. As the friends suffer more tribulations, the feature also adapts an often humorous approach to its storytelling, a lot of it of dark nature, which keeps the proceedings engaging over its short runtime. A few twists in the tale are also sufficient to keep things fresh and unexpected.
A kinetic work that progresses from one setup to the other at rapid speed, it does lose its pace and come to a jittering stop in the final act, which adds some unexpected violence that may seem out of place with the rest of the events thus far, but the aesthetics make the viewing more than pleasant. In this act, the feature instead opts to test just how close these friends are and their loyalties and selfishness, which despite being at odds with the rest of the feature narratively, ends up being compelling enough.
This aspect, and indeed much of the feature's appeal, is helped by its three leading men, all of which provide reasonably good performances. Kent Tsai, who worked with Kai Ko previously on “Mon Mon Mon Monsters”, has a decent arc as the meek Wang who needs to find his footing over the course of the night. After being separated from Chang and Wang, Edison Song as Han doesn't get as many scenes as the other two but makes up for it in the story he tells in the beginning and the brutal finale. Berant Zhu, who many might remember as the lead in the splatter fest “The Sadness”, plays Chang, the character with most shades to it. Seasoned actor Leon Dai also features in the final act as the mob boss Mr. Hsing, while the second act includes “The Great Buddha+” director Huang Hsin-yao in an important role as a policeman.
If there's one thing Kai Ko learnt from both Giddens Ko and Midi Z, it is how to make his feature look pretty, with the nighttime setting of “Bad Education” providing for some lovely neon-tinged cinematography from Chen Ta-pu, which makes its presence felt from the very first frame to the last. The music by Wong Kin-wai too is likewise an effective companion, matching step for step with the genre requirements. The fact that the editing is crisp and at 77 minutes, it helps the feature get to its destination without any unnecessary detours.
Kai Ko knows exactly where he wants his feature to go and succeeds in taking it there without too many hiccups, resulting in a debut that is surprisingly fun and charming. His experience of working with some of the better modern directing names from Taiwan is certainly put to good use, and it comes comes as no surprise that “Bad Education” went on to be nominated for four Golden Horse Awards, even winning one for Berant Zhu.
