Diary

Mon Seung (2006), Hong Kong

Director : Oxide Pang

Synopsis

Diary narrates the story of Winnie, a solitary young woman who appears to have recently ended a relationship with her boyfriend, Seth. Encouraged by her best friend, Winnie decides to meet Ray whose appearance is very similar to that of her ex-boyfriend. Directed by Oxide Pang, Diary is a psychological thriller that will brilliantly lead the viewer through an excursion into Winnie’s mind, between what appears to be real and unreality itself.

Review

Chronologically, Diary follows Re-Cycle, the work that intended to end a cycle in the horror domains previously started by the Pang Brothers with the masterpiece The Eye. The psychological thriller initially explores the loneliness and depression of a young woman who appears to have been recently dumped by her boyfriend. The brilliance in this work however is its ability to repeatedly change the viewer’s perception of the story, repeatedly revealing a new reality until then unknown, as the originally structured storyline continues to suffer drastic metamorphoses along the movie. Accordingly, the director leads the viewer to believe that the movie had ended a number of times before it actually did, as a usually well-achieved final twist is, in this case, replaced by a symbolic number of twists and turns that brilliantly feed a dark and suffocating atmosphere of discomfort, focused on a limited number of characters. For the most part of the movie, the action is claustrophobically confined to just a few sets inside the main character’s apartment. Signs of paranoia and schizophrenia, dementia and isolation, as the director cleverly explores a disease that exhibits a several number of disturbing behavioral symptoms and a character that persuades herself to believe in things that are unreal and unrealistic.

Needless to say, the technical capacities of the Pang Brothers (cf. Ab-normal Beauty and Re-Cycle) are (once more) brilliantly explored by the director. Nevertheless, in this case, the character development appears to be the main priority of Oxide Pang, as the main character slowly reveals her psychologically fragile personality, later better described as obsessive, hopeless and extremely unstable. I agree though – the initial premise seems to be somehow a cliché of the Pang Brothers – how it is treated deserves however particular appreciation, as the character development seems to flow with certain spontaneity, without being dramatically rushed, inconsistent or exacerbated. A brilliant interpretation of the actress Charlene Choi, complemented by competent performances by Isabella Leong and Shawn Yue, must be as well pointed out. Diary comes out as a powerful experience into the tormented mind of a paranoid schizophrenic woman but, most importantly, the movie is able to distinguish itself from the predictable universe the Pang Brothers had given the viewer for the last four years, ironically achieving with Diary the same brilliance the directors had  aspired during the indicated period, without success.