Oxide Pang, co-director of THE EYE, is back in Hong Kong theaters this month with his new thriller AB-NORMAL BEAUTY. This will mark the first time he’s worked without his twin brother Danny, who is also working on a solo project – in fact the two films share car crash footage. Apparently both start with the same incident, but depart from the scene on completely different tracks.
Oxide’s effort follows the exploits of a disturbed young art student with a fascination for photographing death. Things get dicey since she has a history of mental illness, which starts to rear its ugly head, and there’s also the little matter of another person with the same fetish, but he/she likes to get involved before the fact. For some sweet coverage of the film, and to take your own best shot at understanding the full synopsis translation, click here.
One interesting aspect of the film is Pang’s decision to use super-innocent pop twins, Race and Rosanne from the duo 2R. It’s clear they’re not too worried about maintaining a squeaky clean image. The twins play lesbian lovers in the film, which I think is pushing it even for genre fans, but what the hell. Besides, as elder sis Rosanne points out, “It’s all very discreet, we didn’t have any intimate scenes. It was more of a show of emotions.” Maybe the Olson Twins will get the call in the highly probable case of an American remake.
One last note on Pang’s inspiration for the flick. He got the idea from a book a friend lent him on how to photograph dead bodies. NICE!
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