The Siamese Twins [連體] (1984)

Starring Ida Chan Yuk-Lin, Michael Tong Chun-Chung, Tanny Tien Ni, Margaret Lee Din-Long, Robert Mak Tak-Law, Yueh Hua, Kwan Hoi-San, Leung Jun-Git, Fei Pak

Directed by Angela Mak Leng-Chi

Expectations: Moderate. Don’t really know what to expect.

The Siamese Twins tells the story of a college student, Po-Erh (Ida Chan Yuk-Lin), who returns to Hong Kong from Canada, and finds her mother less than satisfied at her return. It is implied that Po-Erh has been in Canada for quite a while (like more than just for college), but this is never explicitly stated. She has clearly never been close with her mother, though, and she doesn’t know where simple things like the telephone are located in her childhood home. Her old room is still set up with a crib and a bed for a young child, so I would guess that she left home sometime early during her elementary school years.

Why do I focus so much on her age when she left her parents? Well… because the movie asks us to believe that Po-Erh was born conjoined with her twin Bei-Erh, but has absolutely no memory of it at all. No brain damage is mentioned or anything that might explain memory loss, other than that the twins were connected at the head. I suppose it’s plausible that someone might forget the first few years of their memory after such a surgery, and I’m usually fine with suspending my disbelief for stuff like this, but as it was presented here it just seemed too far a stretch.