Review | Film review: Double Fixation – Cherie Chung plays the femme fatale in re-release of Yonfan’s 1987 Vertigo rip-off
A Hitchcock homage the fluctuates between solemn tribute and delirious send-up, Double Fixation lacks the suspense of that to which it pays tribute, but at least local film buffs get another chance to see Chung at her most alluring
2/5 stars
It may share the Chinese film title of Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945). It may also practically retell the story of Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), albeit as a camp comedy. But director Yonfan’s Double Fixation – re-released in Hong Kong cinemas on its 30th anniversary, as if it was ever a legitimate classic – is a barely watchable film for any viewer who cares the slightest bit about narrative logic and believable characters.
Soon after photographer Jacky (Jacky Cheung Hok-yau) is hired by an antique dealer to take pictures of a magical orb (the MacGuffin in this story), the dealer is murdered by a professional killer (Pauline Wong Siu-fung). Jacky then finds in his studio the assassin’s body, which just vanishes the next day. But not even those murder mysteries intrigue Jacky as much as the recurrent sight of a beautiful stranger named Cherie.
Played by Cherie Chung Chor-hung, this replica of Kim Novak’s character in Vertigo provides a temporary shelter for Jacky, with the overt aim of retrieving those film negatives for a mysterious villain (a cameo role for screen legend Jeanette Lin Tsui, who produced the film). Cherie is then presumably stabbed to death during the handover, but things take a turn for the predictable when Jacky meets her dead ringer at several of Vertigo’s San Francisco locations.
Film review: Last Romance – Maggie Cheung, Cherie Chung play best friends in Yonfan’s poignant 1988 melodrama
Double Fixation is a self-proclaimed Hitchcock homage that shows no hesitation in replicating the Master of Suspense’s signatures – albeit putting them together in such an unpersuasive way that the whole project feels no more than an in-joke. As the wrongly accused man constantly on the run, Cheung’s protagonist often behaves like an idiot, and is more likely to attract our mockery than sympathy.
