But we like any movie that doesn't do its business with one eye closed and the genre-tease Lam puts in our laps certainly intrigues. The opening swimming sequence punches in to echo supernatural- or horror sensibilities. As I said, Hidden Track went its own surreal routes. Hence it making sense Aubrey would continue to ride this filmmaking wave. But the web of mystery surrounding the two Karena Lam's ultimately build up rather nicely into let's say a 250 piece jigsaw puzzle but is missing a good 50 piece chunk to fully become clear.

Admittedly these pieces are laid out one by one quite skillfully as we experience the respective surroundings of the Anna's played by Karena Lam (the twin in the village setting still uses her Chinese name only, Mok Si Yu) in a state of coldness and emotions are frozen as well. Coming from Singapore to Shanghai for work, city Anna if you will favours career instead of emotions and have clearly shook up aspiring musician Billy (Tender Huang) to the point where he feels disillusioned about love. Treated without tenderness or sweetness, Anna does not violently scar him but that's not necessary to create wounds.

On the rural Mainland side, matters are zombified almost as Si Yu's relationship with Ouyang (Li Yi) is wearing thin. Ouyang suffers from depression and Si Yu's attempts to mend matters, to push her own artistry, to push Ouyang's artistry (he played piano once), go by unnoticed. When the two identical women eventually meet after a mixup of orders at an art gallery, through research they come to the conclusion that they're possibly doppelgangers. They recognize as well as share memories and figures out that this split of one person might mean that one could vanish altogether soon. One of the main things they share is a past love of Ouyang and a 3 day switch is agreed upon as Anna wants to experience the closeness of Ouyang again while Si Yu gets a break from all her attempts to find a workable nature to that relationship...

Some weird writing passages and odd behaviour from characters doesn't exactly go on to make sense once more pieces are added to the puzzle. But there is a confidence on display by director Lam to push for a fragmented narrative, a mystery and the way she has characters deal with past emotions related to relationships. And no one should mind the challenge and by all means questions put forth are clear as the switch occurs. The Anna's are potentially getting an easy way out of an unexamined life, potentially throwing away one that has not been given a chance and as much emotions as they've dealt with, an inner examination and dialogue with their respective selves is what they're actually trying to avoid.

There is a moral to the story somewhere present but when Aubrey Lam ties it all up, the jumps in the timeline starts to make no sense and this viewer anyway couldn't juggle the lives and emotions of the Anna's therefore. Problem with all of this, as opposed to Wong Kar-Wai's Ashes Of Time (an unrelated but complex masterpiece of a movie), is Anna & Anna doesn't provide an invite back to explore more. Perhaps Aubrey Lam is too clever for cinema now because she can't translate the coherency needed to take along even educated viewers on a mystery trip. As I said, she's not by her third movie now ejected from the scene but instead given another pat on the pack of encouragement. This time however, the lives on display didn't come to life.

Anna and Anna is a recent Chinese film, in Mandarin, with a Hong Kong director. It is a beautifully suggestive film, all about creativity and the way art relates to emotional and social life.

Spoiler alert--but it probably doesn't matter to most readers, as I don't think this film will see a Western release.

The first of the two Annas is a successful young Singapore businesswoman. Although she seems to be about 25, she already owns a penthouse apartment. We learn that she studied fine art at university in Shanghai, and we meet her boyfriend Billy, a bearded rock musician who first appears singing a satirical song about materialism and money in English. She tells him that she's been offered a position at her firm's Shanghai office, and she's going.

In parallel, we meet the other Anna, Si Yu, who lives in a farmhouse outside of Shanghai. She is a painter, but we see her copying a Western work off a postcard, doing hack work to make ends meet. Her husband, Ouyang, was once a very successful pianist--he's made a CD--but in a flashback, we see him shattering his piano with an axe in an emotional crisis. He is unable to play any more because of drugs he is obliged to take, presumably psychoactive drugs to combat violent moods and depression. He makes his living as a piano tuner. We see him meet a boy of about ten who plays the piano beautifully, and whom he wants to mentor.

When Anna (i.e. Singapore Anna) comes to Shanghai, she seems to know nobody any more, and in her off hours she wanders into an art gallery. She buys a couple of framed photographic works, scenes of ordinary life. When they arrive at Anna's hotel, there is an extra one, a double photo of Ouyang. She discovers through the gallery that Si Yu had bought the picture. Anna calls her to say that she has the picture, but would like to keep it, because she knows the man. Si Yu comes to the hotel and the two women are astonished to discover that, hair, makeup and clothes aside, they look exactly the same. Further, though only the Singapore one carries the English name Anna, the two have the same Chinese name.

It emerges that there had been a crisis in the relationship between Siyu and Ouyang following a miscarriage. So torn was Anna/Si Yu that she split into two people, one who stayed with Ouyang and remained a painter, and one who left him and Shanghai for a new life in Singapore.

Each envies the other's life, and they agree to trade places for three days. At the end of those days, Si Yu reneges on the deal and uses Anna's money to buy a ticket to Singapore. She plans to run off with Billy for parts unknown, perhaps South America (significantly, he says, "and you can go back to painting")--but before the night is through, she changes her mind and returns to Shanghai.

The two Annas meet again, and each, with regret, returns to her own life. The final image of the film is Si Yu intent upon her painting, painting now on her own.

The view of the possibility of creativity is painful. When Billy sings a love song toward the end of the film, it comes out trite and stiff. It's hard to see that he's ever going to escape his day job in the bakery. Ouyang has been driven mad (a Western cliché, of course, but nonetheless biting for China). Si Yu for most of the film is just a hack. Anna has turned her back on creativity, though like Lot's wife, she can't help looking back. The final image of Si Yu is only a drop of hope in a wider world of despair. There is the boy too, of course, who certainly plays with art and conviction, but we don't know what happens to him.

And why is the basis of creative life Western? Ouyang's music is Western Romantic music. Billy's is rock, and is in English, though he seems to live his life in Mandarin. Even when Siyu paints at the end, she is using Western media, oils or acrylics. It seems to me that there is substance and resonance to this, since to many intelligent Chinese people, Western art is the accessible abroad. Though the hack painting and the rock are derivative to say the least, the promise at the end reminds me of Hans-Georg Gadamer's great phrase: "Cultivation is a return home from alienation." The Westernness of the ground of creativity is often a problem, but need not be.

The characters are emotionally distinct. Anna and Ouyang are the same, unresponsive narcissists. When Si Yu eventually tells Billy that she is not Anna, he says, "Ah. She was never that sweet with me." It seems that Si Yu's fidelity to Ouyang is connected to her fidelity to art, just as Anna made a break with both when she left for Singapore. She left her better self behind. There is an enigma here. How does her betrayal of creativity relate to her betrayal of emotional truth? One could criticize this as just a frustrating blank space that should have been filled in, but to my mind, it relates to a real question: how does creativity relate to emotional truth?

This is a pessimistic view of creativity in Chinese society. I would not be so pessimistic myself.