THE DOUBLE LIFE review

It seems oddly fitting a movie ostensibly about mental illness should be one of the most schizophrenic releases of the past decade. Sadly this isn't meant as a compliment. Perhaps The Double Life's spastic tonal shifts, disconnected editing and its cast who seem as if they're acting in four or five different films each were intentional stylistic choices on the part of director Ning Ying (Perpetual Motion), but for the most part they're good for little more than (unintentional) hysterical laughter.

The narrative attempts to weave together two simultaneous plot threads; first a charismatic university lecturer in psychology, under pressure from his dean to curb his cavalier approach to education, has himself committed to an institution. Second, a security guard at that same institution discovers his ex-wife has also just been admitted as a patient (Zhang Jingchu, Beast Stalker, The Road, Jade Warrior, who can charitably be described as slumming it here). She's suffering from severe depression after her new marriage has turned into dreary, lovelorn routine.

Sparked off by a chance remark from the lecturer, the security guard concocts a plot with his ex-wife where once released, she'll dose her new husband with her medication, thereby driving him insane and into the waiting arms of a straitjacket.

Laid out like this, the idea seems to hold some blackly comic promise - but what we get plays out not unlike a bizarre Chinese-language rehash of Shock Corridor pitched far beyond Samuel Fuller's stentorian melodrama and into the realms of full-on Carry On Nurse camp.

To convey how totally lacking in any kind of subtlety The Double Life is, we are discussing a film where what seems like a full two thirds of the running time has been shot from Dutch angles. If that wasn't enough to ram the subtext home (and it barely qualifies as such) one of the key issues in the lecturer's course is that technically, everyone's suffering from some kind of mental dysfunction!

It is a film where once the current husband has successfully been dosed with happy pills, his transformation into a raging lunatic takes place in minutes, even seconds, accompanied by some of the most stupefying gurning to camera imaginable (just in case the audience failed to catch that he's gone mad).

As if this wasn't enough all this is accompanied by every they're coming to take me away, ha-ha cliché in the book, from a bug-eyed inmate goosing a terrified nurse, to a security guard de-pantsed, to multiple scenes of various characters being dragged off kicking and screaming and more besides. Not to mention the current husband runs a traditional Chinese medicine store (of course he does) laying the groundwork for multiple penis references. Bull penis? Deer penis? Seal penis soup, perhaps?

This could be forgiven, to some extent, if it weren't for the way The Double Life clearly wants to be a moving character drama as well as an uproarious comedy (as well as a stern moral lesson for mainland citizenry on the side) yet it has no idea how to blend these disparate elements together, let alone pitch either of them properly in the first place. Tsui Hark this is not; the narrative glosses over a key motivation for one main character to the point where the viewer might well wonder what relevance he has to the plot, and the film hasn't a clue how to effectively court the audience's sympathy.

One might be forgiven for assuming the security guard is the hero of the piece, inasmuch as it has one, given the new husband is such a buffoon - but then just before the climax the director seems to finally realise SARFT frowns on people getting away with this sort of thing, and tries to change tack for the home stretch. The idea anyone cares whether this one-dimensional cartoon makes it to his sick daughter's bedside before her operation, let alone whether two walking archetypes are punished for their criminal hijinks, is laughable.

We do of course get the expected mainland disclaimer - a few rushed messages before the credits roll assuring us everyone was caught and punished who deserved to be. It bears noting reducing mental illness and attempted murder to ham-fisted slapstick topped off with government platitudes might strike some as particularly distasteful when at the time of writing, mainland China has suffered from a run of school killings - which some commentators have speculated might be linked to a rise in psychological traumas among those disenfranchised by the country's rapid modernisation. No, The Double Life is not especially politicised, and no, China is hardly alone in making films about sensitive subjects that could be seen as tasteless, but some viewers may not like the particular aftertaste this one leaves.

None of this criticism is meant to be taken as telling mainland China what to do, beyond the suggestion that maybe some more thought should have gone into the production. The country's filmmakers are perfectly capable of dealing with this kind of subject matter with due care and restraint without specifically courting Western sensibilities (Cherries, for example). Cultural specifics aside, The Double Life is simply terrible. Little more than a train wreck from start to finish, an incompetent mess distinguished by nothing save its sheer awfulness, it's unlikely to hold any attraction for anyone other than connoisseurs of schlocky curiosities and is impossible to recommend.