You Are the Apple of My Eye (2011) on Netflix

NR20111h 49mComedy Drama Romance

Ko Ching-teng, a mischievous student, claims no interest in Shen Chia-yi, the class's outstanding pupil. When she forgets her textbook, he hands her his own and takes the teacher's punishment.

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Netflix3.8/5
IMDb7.5/1012,520 votes
Rotten TomatoesNot available

Trailer

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Plot summary

The story opens in 1994, when Shen Chia-yi is the top student her teachers and classmates favor at a private school, and a group of close friends all have a crush on her. Ko Ching-teng, a mischievous student with poor marks who has been her classmate since junior high, says he has no interest in her. After Chia-yi forgets her textbook, he hands over his own and pretends the lapse is his, so the teacher punishes him. Touched, she writes practice exams to raise his marks, and his grades climb as the two grow closer. She also defends him in front of a teacher and is punished for it, which wins the respect of Ching-teng and his friends.

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about You Are the Apple of My Eye (2011)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Giddens Ko made You Are the Apple of My Eye on a tight budget by using his entire savings and mortgaging his house to raise the money, saying he did it to impress the ex-girlfriend who inspired the character Shen Chia-yi. Executive producer Angie Chai also helped raise funds.
The search for the male lead was the longest part of casting and drew several celebrities, but Giddens Ko chose first-time actor Ko Chen-tung after seeing him improve at each successive audition and spotting him hiding in a corner frantically studying the script just before one.
Taiwanese censors first gave the film a Restricted classification, which upset Giddens Ko so much that he personally went to the Government Information Office to appeal; the film had to be edited four times before its classification was lowered.
For its mainland China release the film was heavily edited: a flag-raising ceremony and the masturbation scenes were cut, six scenes of what censors called "negative sexual and pro-Taiwan content" were removed or changed, and Giddens Ko had to add new scenes so the story would still flow.
The theme song "Those Years" reached ten million YouTube views by 11 November 2011, which Giddens Ko said broke every viewership record for a Chinese-language video on the site, and it stayed at number one on Taiwan's KKBOX singles daily chart for 64 straight days, beating the previous 45-day record.
The film was shot mainly at Ching Cheng High School, the school Giddens Ko and the real Shen Chia-yi attended. He said he chose it because he wanted to see Ko Chen-tung and Michelle Chen in the uniform he remembered, and its scenes could only be filmed during Taiwanese school holidays.
The film is based on Giddens Ko's semi-autobiographical novel, but he changed details to make it more dramatic: the fight between Ching-teng and Chia-yi actually took place over the phone, not in the rain as shown. He said the main storyline stayed the same.