Ai Ni Ai Wo on AllMovie

Two rebellious youngsters deal with the harsh realities of life on the streets of Taipei in this tough but compassionate drama. Fei-Fei (Sinje) is a young woman chafing under the restrictive yoke of her mother's authority, and when she discovers her mother has been reading her diaries, she decides it's time to strike out on her own. Fei-Fei moves in with her best friend Yili (Kelly Kuo), whose boyfriend Tiger (Leon Dai) is the top man in a local street gang. Fei-Fei joins Yili in selling betelnuts on the street -- a pepper which in sufficient quantities produces a mild high not unlike marijuana. While hawking her wares, Fei-fei meets Feng (Chang Chen), who has just finished a hitch in the army and is looking for something to do with his life. Fei-Fei and Feng fall in love and move in together, but their lives quickly take divergent paths -- Feng makes friends with one of Tiger's underlings, Guang (Kao Ming-chun), and soon becomes a member of Taipei's criminal underground. Fei-Fei, on the other hand, is looking for something better than selling low-level drugs on the street, and tries to strike out in a new career in show business. Ai Ni Ai Wo (which literally translates as "Love You, Love Me," though the film's official English-language title is Betelnut Beauty) won an award for Lin Cheng-sheng as Best Director at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival.