As its more lyrical English title suggests, You Are the Apple of My Eye hedges its bets more on feelings than folly, as the rowdy comedy slowly gives way to a romantic drama dripping with melancholy about the dissipation of youthful loves and dreams at the onset of adulthood.

Based on the director's memoir about his teenage years, You Are the Apple of My Eye begins in 2005 with Ko Ching-teng (a taller, hunkier version of the real Ko, played by Ko Chen-tung) readying himself for a wedding.

Whose nuptials it is, the film doesn't reveal yet - as the movie goes back a decade to find Ko and his gang fooling about as high school students, pulling pranks while hankering for the attention of the pretty but prissy straight-A student Shen Jia-yi (Michelle Chen, below left with Ko).

All except Ko, of course - but it's nearly inevitable that this bickering pair would gradually fall for each other's charms. And it's here that the film begins to resemble a typical teen-rom-com, as the quirkiness and the vibrancy shown at the beginning of the story dissipates, to be replaced by the more conventional depictions of yearning, short-lived joy and post-breakup regret typical of a romantic drama, here enhanced further by the characters' growing realisation of the passing of their youthful years.

While You Are the Apple of My Eye hardly breaks new ground, Giddens Ko at least offers a soundly made film with which a certain demographic - viewers aged 15 to 25 - could easily resonate with. It's certainly devoid of the grating naivete that drives many Taiwanese TV serials, but Apple is still drenched in a nostalgia that looks too uncomplicated and squeaky clean.

You Are the Apple of My Eye opens today