re:mote voices

Title: Ab-Normal Beauty
Cast: Race Wong, Rosanne Wong, Michelle Mee, Anson Leung
Director: Oxide Pang

Jin has just won yet another award for her photography, but the young art student isn’t as impressed by her work as the judges. When she is confronted by a car crash, she shocks herself by taking pictures. But with her shock, she has to admit she is also somewhat excited by the images. With this, she moves on from the accidental image to the deliberate, seeking out death that she can capture. Her girlfriend Jas is distressed by Jin’s behaviour, and the unwanted attention of Anson, a fellow art student who seems to be stalking Jin, doesn’t help matters. As Jin pursues her attraction to the aesthetics of death things escalate and get out of hand, Jin becoming increasingly unstable in the process.

Ab-Normal Beauty has echoes of a variety of films – Cronenberg’s Crash, Tsukamoto’s Snake Of June, Stopkewich’s Kissed, among others. The Pang Brothers showing the flair they have demonstrated in films like Bangkok Dangerous and The Eye, then taking it to a new level. Showing in the Asia Extreme 2005 season alongside Shinya Tsukamoto’s Vital the two films compliment each other well, sharing strong thematic and visual similarities. The Pang Brothers perhaps even out Shinya Tsukamotoing Shinya Tsukamoto.

Casting Race Wong and Rosanne Wong as the leads and a couple is an interesting move. Putting a lesbian couple so central to the narrative and managing not to be exploitative. The characters are treated in a mature fashion, the relationship between Jin and Jas being central and believable. Jas’s jealousy over Anson’s attention, and concern for Jin’s stability, providing an in to the character of Jin who at times seems distant and unattainable.

Ab-Normal Beauty makes good use of colour from the start, Jin and Jas go out taking pictures – buildings gaining colour washes to make them stand out against black and white backgrounds. While a number of scenes take place in Jin’s dark room, giving them that red glow. These are just a couple of examples of the little things that are done throughout, and while the touches may be fairly straight forward, it is always nice to see someone who actually makes the effort.

Ab-Normal Beauty starts off as a visually striking piece, leading us into the lives of these engaging characters. There is a clear darkness here, the nature of death and art’s response to death being central. It is this kind of territory that makes Ab-Normal Beauty comparable to Vital, both being strong examples of cinematic art. However the Pang Brothers twist things around, pulling the carpet out from under our feet and knocking us over. Ab-Normal Beauty is dark, and then it gets very dark, and with that very nasty. Of the six films shown in Tartan’s Asia Extreme season 2005, Ab-Normal Beauty is striking and undoubtedly the most extreme.