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5-10-05: Movie Review: Ab-Normal Beauty
2R 4 Life, baby!
I've written a lot of reviews of movies starring Gillian Chung and Charlene Choi, who together comprise the Cantopop group Twins; I therefore hope I'm not alienating the diehard Twins fans who no doubt occasionally visit this site by reviewing a movie starring one of their chief musical rivals, the girl group 2R (don't laugh; some fans are very loyal indeed to the girl group of their choice). My opinion of the 2R film -- that it's better by an order of magnitude than most of the dreck Gillian and Charlene have starred in over the years -- will probably further alienate the loyalists, but hey: it's the truth. Ab-Normal Beauty is a snappily directed, visually impressive film that places a strong emphasis on the mental state of the heroine -- surprisingly, this is not a gimmick-ridden teen horror film tailored exclusively for its two stars, but rather a terse psychological drama with a life of its own.
Directed by Oxide Pang (of Pang Brothers fame), Ab-Normal Beauty stars sisters Race and Rosanne Wong as art students Jin and Jas, respectively. Both are aspiring photographers. Jin is particularly talented, but is also perpetually moody and somber; obviously, she's not very mentally healthy. After impulsively taking a voyeuristic picture of a woman who was just killed in a car accident, though, her merely moody personality begins to take on a more sinister edge: she becomes obsessed with dark and macabre photos and images. The obsession snowballs: she takes photos of a man killing chickens, and finally violently kills one herself; she takes pictures of a suicide victim; she buys art books full of disgusting, grisly images; she coerces a guy who has a crush on her into posing for some terrifying photos, and even seems for a few minutes as if she might actually kill him. She even risks suicide herself.
Jas (who has romantic feelings for her) is freaked out by her friend's behavior, and is further freaked out to learn that as a child Jin was molested by a group of her cousins -- the incident clearly played no small part in the formation of her adult character.
Confused by her own actions, an emotionally exhausted Jin finally collapses, and worriedly tells Jas that she's afraid she might kill someone someday. At this point the film takes an intelligent, unexpected turn: with Jas's support, Jin begins to confront her dark obsession with death. Rather than exploit her mental instability by, say, turning her fully into a psychotic murderess and setting her loose to stalk the remainder of the movie, the film chooses to deal with her condition maturely: Jin realizes that something is wrong with her, and realizes that she needs help in overcoming her morbid fascinations.
Jin's recovery is stymied, however, by a series of mysterious VHS tapes that are left on her doorstep. Filled with horrible, disgusting images -- footage of a chained woman being brutally beaten to death by a man wielding a pipe -- the tapes terrify Jin, partly because she fears a relapse, and partly because the footage seems real. This leads to a striking ending, which I won't give away (except to say that it's blessedly free of gimmicky twists).
The film's essential message -- don't get drawn into a world of death if you can help it -- struck me as atypically insightful. There are people out there who, in attempting to give their personalities or creative endeavors an edge, often embrace death and macabre nihilistic garbage -- but this can be dangerous, because it invites both real physical danger (as Jin invited danger when her obsession drew the attention of the tape-delivering psycho) and real psychological danger (as the soul sickens as a result of focusing so much on darkness and pessimism). Fortunately, the movie isn't preachy, and in fact can probably be read from some other angles: Jin's complicated past prevents the message from being truly clear-cut, as the last few seconds of the film make clear.
Seeing as how I wasn't expecting the movie to be much more than a cheesy teen horror film (it stars a pair of pop princesses, for heaven's sake!) I came away from Ab-Normal Beauty very pleasantly surprised. The acting is good (Race Wong is a capable actress, and her sister Rosanne isn't half bad, either), the direction is smart (if occasionally pretentious, which is typical of the hit-or-miss Pang Brothers, I'm afraid), and it manages, especially towards the end, to evoke a strong sense of unease and foreboding in the viewer. This is good, effective stuff -- maybe not brilliant, but definitely worth watching at least once.