Double reflection

“Is that a human being?” Mysterious photographs appear on the walls in the Ximen district of Taipei. A dark, possibly human shape. It’s hot, as though it’s the summer; the crowd is dense, as usual; it’s hard to imagine that it’s New Year’s Eve. The young director Wang Chun Hong’s first film has the feel of stark fiction: first capturing a moment and an urban atmosphere, Double Reflection is then gradually infected by the arrival of a body that we end up following, fascinated by the signs of solitude led from a sunny park to an empty bedroom at night. Perhaps he’s a photographer, but one who no longer takes photos – or very rarely. A lingering fascination with the photographic process, the eye that watches us.xs The depths of the black and white image work to highlight the few elements that still bind him to his world: the presence or absence of a woman, the dazzle of fireworks… In this sensitive cartography of Taipei, a crumpled picture acts as a bridge to the true language of the city – an echo system in which luck plays second fiddle to symbols and a certain fatalism. Wang Chun Hong’s character knows, then, that he is moving along the tracks; the spectator of his own life, aware of what he’s going through and of a pain that he both seeks out and flees. Double Reflection raises the question of how, then, can we change our perspective? (VP)