Ab-normal Beauty (2004)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

When you finish watching "Abnormal Beauty" you feel like you've been watching two different movies: in the first one we got the story of this young girl who feels attracted by death. She likes to take pictures of corpses and dead animals. Quite a disturbing stuff... In the other movie we got got an ordinary story involving a psycho-killer that looks like "Saw".Anyway, Oxide Pang tries to makes up for the lack of a good script giving his movie a modern look, MTV-oriented, that it will be out of date 5 or 10 years from now. Movies just like this one may entertain you for a while but they definitely won't remain in your memory for a long time. You need more than a dozen of editing effects and a deafening soundtrack to live on.*My rate: 4/10

It starts like a horror film. Photography student one day witnesses a death, takes a picture of it, and her morbid fascination is unleashed. She starts taking picture of dead things and being generally "creepy." There is really nothing more to say as far as plot goes.To her credit, it's not as if she was already a perfectly adjusted art student, assuming there is such a thing. Apparently, she was gang raped while she was about eight years old from her ten-year-old cousin (!) and his friends. No, I'm not kidding. The film really shows a pre-teenie gang rape. But let's buy it for plot's sake.So now, our morbid art student hates guys, has hooked up with another sexually confused girlie like herself, vows that she will "never" like guys, and is generally "angry" and, well, disturbed.Enter Spineless Geek character. Some emasculated, effeminate film student (is there any other kind? nyuck, nyuck) is -- against all rationality and reason -- infatuated with her. Being that he never leaves her alone, she eventually finds herself forced to battle her attraction toward him.And that's really the film. No horror here. Just an overly stylized, chic-music-laden film about a psychologically disturbed and sexually aberrated girl trying to figure it all out. And that's the true meaning of the "abnormal" in the title.Stay away from this movie unless you want to witness plenty of drawn out scenes of our protagonist doing "weird" things, like dangling off a balcony or drenching herself in red paint -- oh, and screaming into nothingness while she's at it. You know... screaming, as in "woah, this scene is emotionally deep and stuff." All because mum did not believe her when she said her cousin gangbanged her. (Enter even more disgustingly schmaltzy piano music here.)*** POTENTIAL SPOILERS BEGIN ***Alright, now. To be fair. After a torturous hour of nothingness, the protagonist spills the beans to mum and all turns bright and cheery again -- until the very next scene. She receives a videotape showing the torture and murder of an unidentified girl. Confused Duo now turns to Detective Duo, and the protagonist and her "girlfriend" go confront Spineless Geek for having made it. Of course, he knows nothing of it. Soon a second tape arrives -- uh-oh. It's the main squeeze. Not a big loss, really. She was a man-hater and not particularly attractive to begin with. Amusingly enough, while the "girlfirend" is being beat to death, her only concern is "Don't hurt Jin!" Ridiculous. It's very hard to watch, though. Unless you enjoy seeing violence against mentally ill women, who need psychological help, and certainly not murder! But anyway. Who is doing all this?*** POTENTIAL SPOILERS END ***The film actually does turn to a bona fide horror film, but only after having us wait an entire hour! Even then... the final scene -- the last 20 minutes, which are supposedly the "nerve-racking" part, according to some reviewers -- is nothing more than another ridiculously drawn out pseudo-emotional part that attempts to make you "care." The killer's identity is eventually revealed and, um, oooh, "surprise." Whatever. By the way, one of the funniest parts of the film is where the protagonist is taking pictures of a guy killing chickens and the guy exclaims (referring to the chicken), "What a beautiful cock!" This is, incidentally, precisely what the protagonist needs. Then this entire miserable film would have never been made.I suggest you watch the first twenty minutes, then skip to the last twenty. However, if you don't have the patience for it, you're not missing much. There are plenty of films that have done this better.The lesson of the day is, kiddies: Hong Kong cannot make horror. Even the infamous "Ebola Syndrome" fell prey in large part to the typical Hong Kong "horror film" weakness of being more wishy-washy pseudo-emotional social commentary than true horror film (though it is, admittedly, in a class of its own). And this is what this film is as well. Nothing more than a schmaltzy wannabe heartstring tugger disguised as "horror."

A very weird tale about a lesbian girl, semi-losing her mind from a combination of past events, and her present preferences. She is an artist, with an emphasis on photography. She suddenly starts becoming obsessed with taking pictures of death.Her friends don't really take that very well. They think it's psycho, and so do other people that you wouldn't really call her "friends"...All in all a very good movie. If you're into Asian films, especially those with a chilling twist... This ones for you! The director portrayed losing your mind very well in my opinion, which I didn't really expect because the main character was very good looking. Making her lesbian made me think that it was going to try and make her looks sell the picture... I was very wrong. This film was written very well, and the character development was nothing short of amazing.

Just one of the Pang brothers this time but quite a tour de force. Always looking good, this tells the story of two lesbian girl friends, and although we don't get to see any of that sort of action, we see plenty of the violent kind. One sister, very much into art and photography drifts into taking pictures of the dead and dying and with the help of contextual flashbacks a powerful story develops. Violence is always threatened and when we see the 'snuff' video we think that's it. But there is much more to come and it is very heavy stuff. Apparently the two leads are real life sisters who make up a Singapore singing duo. Pretty though they are there is not much sign of such frivolities here.