Li Kansheng, the protagonist in Tsai’s Rebels, plays a young delinquent in Boys. He blackmails a little boy from a wealthy middle-class family and forces him to pay increasing sums as ‘protection money’. He is the prototype of a child neglected by his parents and has learnt to hold his own on the wrong side of the tracks. His victim’s parents are too busy listening to Lieder even to notice their child’s problems.Tsai portrayed the two dissimilar families, but his heart is obviously with the children: he portrays their life at school, in the amusement arcades, the snackbars and the lonely bedrooms, and does so without a whisper of falsity or special pleading. The performances Tsai gets out of his actors, most of the amateurs, are another striking feature of Boys.
