Twins
双生
China, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 80 mins.
Director: Gim Jin-seong 김진성 | 金振成.
Rating: 4/10.
Stylishly mounted mystery-horror is a one-trick pony with little beyond its Big Twist.
STORY
Shanghai, the present day. Art-school student Li Pin (Liu Haoran) arrives at one of the city’s traditional oldstyle mansions for a commission of one month’s work for RMB100,000, painting a young woman and her twin sister. The girl’s stern guardian (Zhao Rui) gives him a haircut and new clothes to wear; he’s told not to leave the building and to keep the commission secret. His subject is Tao (Chen Duling), who’s been in a specially designed electric wheelchair following a car accident in which her parents and elder twin sister Lao were killed. She calls him Luhai and tells him to act as if he’s her boyfriend and they’ve known each other for a year. Next day, fed up with all the mystery and rules, Li Pin is about to throw the job in and leave when he spots a painting on the hall wall by the late Chao Hui, one of his favourites. Tao finally explains that Luhai was her and her sister’s best friend when they were young. She complains that she’s had enough of the house and the wheelchair, and wants to get out and experience real life. Li Pin dreams of the two of them doing just that. During the night, however, he overhears a conversation between the guardian and the family doctor (Gong Yingtian) that the course of antibiotics isn’t working and surgery is necessary as soon as possible. Li Pin asks Tao directly whether Chao Hui was her father and she admits it; she adds that Lao was always better than her at everything, including painting and music. Gradually, Tao becomes jealous of Li Pin’s interest in Lao, and eventually says he must choose between the two of them. Li Pin tells her that’s nonsense, as her sister is dead. Meanwhile, he’s found a sketchpad in which someone has been drawing his portrait.
REVIEW
A one-trick pony that gets by on sheer production values for part of the time but doesn’t have much else up its sleeve after the Big Reveal, Twins 双生 is a stylishly mounted mystery-horror, about a young painter hired for a strange commission, that ultimately fails to pack any dramatic punch. Written and directed by South Korean journeyman Gim Jin-seong 김진성 | 金振成 after a decade’s absence from the industry, it was intended as the Chinese version of a script also to be made in Korean and Japanese with different young leads. Shot in early 2016, it’s taken three years to reach Mainland screens, where it took only RMB17 million – more than the average quickie Mainland horror but hardly enough to justify an international franchise.
Gim made three commercial outings in various genres in the early 2000s – Surprise 서프라이즈 (2002), The Showdown 거칠마루 (2005) and My 11th Mother 열한번째 엄마 (2007) – none of which was especially memorable. He then disappeared until Twins, shot with Mainland backing in Beijing and Shanghai in early 2016. At the time, it was only the second movie by Fujian-born actress Chen Duling 陈都灵, then 22, who’d made an impressive debut as the lead in student romance The Left Ear 左耳 (2015). However, as the wheelchair-bound enigma in Twins, she’s as blank and unconvincing as she’s been in subsequent roles (whodunit Inference Notes 推理笔记, 2017; virtual-reality action drama Dream Breaker 破梦游戏, 2018), and her baby-faced co-star Liu Haoran 刘昊然, then 18 and best known for his shy sidekick in comedy whodunit Detective Chinatown 唐人街探案 (2015), isn’t strong enough to carry such a thinly-scripted film, even though his character is less naive than his looks suggest. In a chamber drama that relies on only three performers, it’s theatre/TV actress Zhao Rui 赵芮 who cuts the strongest profile, as the stern guardian of the wheelchaired girl who prowls around the cavernous Shanghai mansion like a Victorian governess in designer clothes.
The script’s lack of any dramatic arc, as it leads the viewer on and on with few explanations, isn’t helped by an inordinate amount of WeChat texting between the leads, which keeps diffusing any accumulated tension. By the 50-minute mark, the plot is starting to go round in circles, with little empathy engendered for the characters, and it’s only the Big Twist that manages to stretch the film to a mere 80 minutes. Production values, however, are top class – especially the atmospheric score by Im Min-ju 임민주 | 林民主 and striking art direction by Shin Da-chi 신다치 | 辛点希 (the girl’s Regency-style room, full of toys and mobiles). Overall, the film has a very Korean look and feel – hardly surprising given the number of Korean crew members.
CREDITS
Presented by Spring Era Films (Horgos) (CN), Beijing YL Entertainment & Sports (CN).
Script: Gim Jin-seong. Photography: Li You. Editing: Zhang Yifan. Music: Im Min-ju. Art direction: Shin Da-chi. Styling: Choi Yeon-ha. Sound: Zhang Li, Liu Tao. Action: Ou Chengwei. Visual effects: Yi Je-seon (Znode).
Cast: Chen Duling (Tao; Lao), Liu Haoran (Li Pin), Zhao Rui (guardian), Gong Yingtian (doctor), Deng Huiwen (young Tao; young Lao), Zhang Ruiyu (young Luhai).
Release: China, 18 May 2019.