Ab-Normal Beauty
Director: Oxide Pang
Year: 2004
Rating: 6.0
There is never an
issue with a Pang Brother film looking good – their well-designed sets, great
use of color and constant barrage of visual flourishes always make this
part a pleasure – but their narrative has often not matched these visuals
in terms of drama or content. One Take Only, Tesseract, Bangkok Haunted
and Nothing to Lose come to mind. One senses that they are not great storytellers
and that what they really enjoy is the technical, atmospheric and visual
aspects of the filmmaking process. When they do have a compelling story (The
Eye, Bangkok Dangerous), the visuals are only an added enhancement but too
often they seem to be the raison d'etre. That describes this film to a large
extent.
This is a beautifully malformed film. Director Oxide Pang gives it a dynamic
and vibrant look – clean crisp visuals – saturated colors – that make many
of the shots seem more like still photography than a film. He often stops
to simply leave the camera on the main actress’s face for long periods of
time to capture her changing mood and expressions. He also indulges us in
some creepy and virulent imagery and imposes a constantly unsettling mood
on the proceedings. Almost every scene on its own has something interesting
going on, but there is little emotional or logical connective tissue holding
them together. One has to wonder if Oxide had two different stories percolating
in his head – one without an ending and one without a beginning – and simply
decided to string them into one film and change just enough to be able to
call it one movie. The first part of the film fades away with many unanswered
questions lingering in the air and the second part comes and goes like a quick
nasty slap on the face. This left me with a sense of lost opportunity – this
should have been so much better than it is.
The Pang’s seem to prefer young inexperienced actors – Angelica Lee, Fresh
(Thai), Wanatchada Siwapornchai (Thai) - for their films in general.
Here he brings in two young female pop singers from Hong Kong – better known
to those in the know as R2 – Racine and Rosanne Wong – sisters as you might
gather. I know absolutely nothing about them, but was surprised at how solid
they are in their roles – not that a lot of acting is really called for –
but they look comfortable in front of the camera and they are photogenic in
an interesting way. I am also surprised at their willingness to be in such
a mature film filled with sexual content – one masturbation scene – and brutal
violence. I can’t imagine you would find many of today's Hong Kong’s idols
in a film such as this and I give them kudos for doing so. In certainly a
very real/reel strange twist – they don’t play sisters but instead good friends
with strong overtones of a potential lesbian relationship – even play acting
that with your sister can’t feel right! Racine in particular gets the major
portion of time and is darkly appealing and it will be interesting to see
if she settles back into more mainstream young adult roles in her next films.
Pang also has Anson Leung (One Nite in Mongkok) in the film, but he doesn’t
generate much interest and appears to be imitating a wooden chair.
Jiney (Racine) is a morose college student interested in photography and
painting and is plagued by a childhood memory in which some other children
abused her. Her best friend is Jas (Rosanne) who shares in Jiney’s interests
and as the film progresses would it seems like to share in much more. After
coming upon a dead person from a car accident, Jiney snaps a few shots of
the body and afterwards becomes morbidly fascinated with photographing the
dead – chickens, birds and dogs – that she takes great care to lie out like
a fashion shoot. Her mind soon appears to be on the verge of becoming unhinged
– she sees blood dripping down from a model her class is painting, her bedtime
facial make-up takes on the imagery of a death mask, she hallucinates that
her negatives are covered with blood. Is she going crazy or has she become
possessed by some spirit of the dead. She looks to be seeking death everywhere
– even possibly her own as she sways dangerously on the wrong side of a 10th
floor railing – or perhaps she even has some need to kill someone so that
she can photograph it. Anson is a fellow student who follows her around like
a lost puppy with a camcorder and films her constantly.
This has some potentially wonderfully dark undertones that could fly off
in a lot of directions, but it never adds up to anything in the end. Then
the story suddenly diverts into a thread dealing with a snuff film that feels
so organically different than from what came before it that you are simply
never quite able to join in. The first section felt so unfinished and the
jump felt as if it came from nowhere. Perhaps Oxide was attempting to simply
kick the viewer out of their genre complacency - what appeared to be
a supernatural film suddenly becomes something much more real and scary -
but it didn't work for me. A film like this in its own way is more frustrating
to watch than a bland Hong Kong comedy that never had any ambitions from the
beginning – there is a lot here to suck you in but then it is unable to keep
you there.