ABSTRACT
Acknowledging the diverse characterizations of the Bildungsroman, this chapter investigates how the theme of coming of age is transformed and transfigured through the cinematic lens, and how recent popular cinema has reviewed and reinvented this broadly defined genre through the introspective memories of the female protagonists. First surveying Hong Kong coming-of-age films of the 1950s and 1960s, this chapter follows with an examination of how postmillennial films respond to and resist the residual coming-of-age narratives of previous generations. The growing trend of addressing disillusionment, the pain of development, and the pathos of inertia in recent coming-of-age films illuminates a hidden affective need to grapple with development and maturation against the melodrama of displacement and identity searching.
