Taiwanese film “The Uniform” is a typical coming-of-age tale about two different female high school students who happen to share the same desk in their classroom right from their first year. As their accidental friendship goes through several ups and downs during next several years, they become more aware of the social distance between them, and it is touching to observe how they still care about each other despite that.

The story begins with their first day at some prestigious high school in Taipei, 1997. Because she unfortunately underperformed in the high school entrance examination, Ai (Buffy Chen) has no choice but to enroll in the night program of that school, and she understandably cannot help but feel inferior compared to those day program students, who all got a better score in the examination. Her widow mother, who is incidentally a teacher, is quite excited about her daughter’s enrollment in the high school and ready to support and motivate her daughter as much as possible despite their poor economic status, but this only pressures Ai more than before.

Anyway, Ai and her fellow classmates are going to share the same classroom with a group of day program students, and Ai comes to share a desk with Min (Chloe Xiang), who is incidentally one of the most promising students in the day program of their school. As they subsequently exchange some notes between them during next several days, Ai and Min get closer to each other, and they eventually become each other’s best friend, though there is not much time for them to be together in their school.

Nevertheless, they soon find how to spend more time with each other. Min gladly lends one of her uniforms to Ai for helping her disguise as a day program student, and Ai is certainly delighted as getting more chance to be with her best friend, while also experiencing how things are a bit different to the day program students compared to the night program students in the school. As frequently going back and forth between the day and night program thanks to her best friend, she feels more like belonging to the day program, but, not so surprisingly, skipping her night program more than once consequently affects her test scores, and she comes to hide this serious problem from her mother.

Meanwhile, the situation becomes a little more complicated due to a hunky boy Ai met at a local table tennis coaching academy where she has worked as a part-time employee. He turns out to be a day program student of her school, and, what do you know, he also turns out to be the boy on whom Min has had a crush for a while. Unfortunately, Ai is also attracted a lot to this boy, and he seems to be more interested in Ai, but Ai lets her best friend try to get closer to him while hiding her personal feelings toward him

 As this tricky triangle is continued among its three main characters during their second year at the school, the movie immerses us more into their youthful daily life with some amusing period details to notice. If you are around their age in the late 1990s like me, you surely remember those early years of the Internet, and you will be tickled a bit when Min, who is incidentally much more affluent than Ai compared to Ai, casually talks about how fast her Internet connection is (Remember when even a one-megabyte file was too hefty to download?).

When that boy eventually comes to show more of his feelings toward Ai, she lies a bit to him just for impressing him more, and, of course, this consequently leads to more conflict for her. Becoming more aware of how promising and privileged he is just like Min, she feels more like an imposter, and, of course, there inevitably comes a point where she cannot maintain her little lies anymore.

Around its three main characters’ final year at the school, the screenplay by Hsu Hui-fang and Wang Li-wen expectedly becomes melodramatic. After a sudden big catastrophe occurs all over Taiwan (Yes, this did happen in 1999), Ai becomes more serious about what she should do for her future, and she also comes to appreciate more of the sincere support from her mother, who has struggled a lot for the family in one way or another while hoping for the best for her two daughters. In case of her strained relationship with Min, she eventually finds a way to mend their relationship, and there is a brief but moving moment when they come to show each own anxiety to each other.

The three main cast members are well-cast in their respective parts. Buffy Chen is engaging in her introverted character’s gradual maturation along the story, and she also did a good job of handling a certain cliché associated with Superman’s human alter ego later in the story. On the opposite, Chloe Xiang complements her co-star well with her more confident appearance, and Yitai Chiu looks good enough as the object of admiration to Ai and Min. Around the main story, Chi Chin often steals the show as Ai’s mother, and her adamantly frugal lifestyle is a constant source of amusement throughout the movie.

On the whole, “The Uniform”, directed by Chuang Ching-shen, does not bring anything particularly new or fresh to its genre territory, but it has enough heart and spirit to interest us just like many other solid coming-of-age tale drama films. I surely knew where it is heading from the very beginning, but I could feel that its main characters do grow up in the end, and that is enough for me for now.