For Taiwanese filmmaker Cheng Wen-tang, picking his daughter Enno Cheng I-nung to star in his new movie, Summer's Tail, wasn't an easy decision. Besides the difficulties of directing someone so close to him, the relationship highlighted the generation gap between the 49-year-old and the film's teenage characters.
The director says having Enno in the cast made him more anxious. 'I needed to have very good reasons to use her,' says Cheng, who was recently in town to attend the film's premiere here during the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival.
Before selecting the 20-year-old Enno - who also wrote the script - to play Yvette, a strong-willed schoolgirl and guitarist-singer plagued by cardiac problems, the pair had discussed casting. Enno was the last person he'd considered for the lead role but her talent won him over.
'Enno's musical ability is one of the reasons. I think her personality quite fits the character and she's totally new to audiences. If I'd chosen other actors, such as [Hong Kong teen-pop idol] Isabella Leong Lok-sze, the spirit and feeling [of the movie and character] would be totally different,' he says.
Cheng says he treated Enno like any other cast member. 'I was very careful I didn't take care of her too much on the set. She was just one of the actors.'
Set in a small town in Taiwan, Summer's Tail depicts the adolescent trials and tribulations of four youngsters over a summer. It co-stars Bryant Chang Jui-chia, who was best new performer at last year's Golden Horse Awards for the gritty teen-flick Eternal Summer, Taiwanese actor Lin Han and Japanese model-turned-actor Dean Fujioka.
Summer's Tail presented different challenges to previous works - such as Blue Cha Cha (2005), a story of an ill-fated woman searching for love, and Somewhere Over the Dreamland (2002), about a middle-aged Taiwanese aborigine reminiscing about his youthful ideals. Cheng had to trust his cast to get the mood right. 'Youth is something distant to me at my age now. I worried a lot and listened to the young actors a lot,' says Cheng, who served as the chairman of this year's Kaohsiung Film Festival. 'I always asked them whether they thought and talked like [their characters do] in the movie.'
