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International Premiere!
Directed by Li Yu
Since debuting with her first narrative feature Fish and Elephant in 2001, director Li Yu has gone from rough-and-ready documentary realism with non-professional actors to working with some of the biggest Chinese stars. While the production values in each of her films have scaled successively upwards – Double Xposure, her fifth feature may be the most visually ambitious yet, with underwater and helicopter shots and CGI figuring intoits geographically sprawling canvas – some of the constants in her earlier work have happily remained. There is her abiding interest in exploring the complexions of female psychology and penchant for testing both filmic and film industry boundaries: Fish and Elephant broached the taboo subject of lesbians; her last film Buddha Mountain blazed the trail for independent distribution in China, becoming the first “art film” hit in an environment notoriously inhospitable to independent distribution.
Double Xposure overtly brings together both tendencies in Li Yu’s filmmaking career. This stylish and briskly paced psychological thriller (the subgenre already making the film somewhat of a novelty in the Chinese context) plumbs thriller staples of dualities and doubling in dizzying permutations (past indistinguishable from present, reality entangled with illusion, guilt and terror shadowing feelings of love) to a clincher of an ending. Joan Chen in a supporting role impresses, as does Chinese superstar Fan Bingbing, playing a young urbanite whose façade of certainties and comforts – boyfriend, apartment and car – violently splinters in a moment of jealousy.
– Cheng-Sim Lim
Producer: Fang Li. Screenwriter: Li Yu, Fang Li. Cinematographer: Florian J.E. Zinke. Editor: Li Yu, Yuan Ze. Cast: Fan Bingbing, Feng Shaofeng, Huo Siyan, Joan Chen, Yao Anlian.
35mm, color, Putonghua w/ English s/t, 105 min.
View the trailer below.
