Movie Review: Inner Senses/異度空間

I hadn’t watched this movie in about 8 years, and considering I’m 47 and my memory is starting to go, rewatching it was essentially a new experience.

Leslie Cheung plays Jim Law, a psychiatrist tasked with treating Yan, an emotionally disturbed woman played by Karena Lam, who claims to see ghosts.

It doesn’t help that her new landlord obsessively lives his life around waiting for his dead wife and son to return; he cooks extra food every night, buys them new slippers, and thinks that moving out of the flat he’s now renting to Yan has confused their spirits.

Jim doesn’t believe in ghosts per se, but he does believe that people believe in ghosts.

He sees them as a kind of psychological coping mechanism that people create.

A battle between psychology and the supernatural ensues, and the film takes its time developing the story, the characters, and the mood.

Director Bruce Law does a really good job keeping the audience guessing; we’re not sure if these characters are possessed or just plain batsh*t crazy.

He also creates a very palpable tension in the film that is amplified by its unhurried pace and occasional flashes of terror.

Jim and Yan eventually develop a relationship beyond doctor and patient.

It’s played subtly, and the other characters, including her family members, seem not only accepting but happy about it.

It’s not unusual on this side of the planet to have such relationships, but it still seemed a little odd to me.

I’m not sure about their characters, but in real life Leslie Cheung and Karena Lam have a 22 year age difference.

The romance isn’t played for frights, but that’s creepy.

The ending is unexpected, unusual, and a narrative risk.

It brings together the two main threads of the story in a way that I didn’t see coming.

It’s a very unique scene, and thankfully it works.

If it wasn’t played so well, and if the audience hadn’t been led to this point so carefully, it might have come off as hokey, but I found myself surprised not just by the scene but by how easily I could accept it.

It’s not a twist as much as it’s an unexpected turn, and it really makes the movie memorable for me.

The director and the actors deserve all the credit for creating something so interesting and memorable.

The other thing that obviously makes the movie memorable is that it was Leslie Cheung’s last film.

At least he left us with a very strong performance.