Look away

I believe everyone, like me at the beginning, felt confused when watching this film.

How could such a beautiful girl be bullied by her classmates?
Jealousy from her "bitchy" best friend is understandable, but why did the male students pick on her?
The film emphasizes through nude scenes that these kids are 18-year-olds in the throes of hormonal surges.
Boys, is your eyesight that bad?

This confusion persisted until I learned about her father's occupation— a plastic surgeon.

The root of all evil and symbol of wickedness in this film is the father.

If the father's excessively strict demands on his daughter don't ring any bells, then the scene where he measures her face with a caliper, indicating where to shave a few inches or reduce a few points, almost explicitly reveals the truth.

The heroine has undergone plastic surgery.

Remember when the daughter met her father's mistress at the plastic surgery clinic?
The father said, "I made an appointment with my daughter."

Many viewers were misled into thinking the appointment referred to watching a movie later. In reality, they had scheduled a consultation for plastic surgery, but due to unexpected circumstances, they had to switch to watching a movie. That's why when the father and daughter return to the clinic later, there's a scene where he says, "This is your birthday gift" and insists, "Say yes."

This is clearly not the first time.

The heroine might have originally been an ordinary-looking girl, and her current beauty is the result of multiple surgeries.

Since the twin sisters were born with deformities, she probably had minor flaws too.

Thus, the perfection-obsessed father used this as an excuse to "correct" his daughter's "defects" repeatedly.

In the eyes of her classmates, she became a freak who kept getting plastic surgery.

Once this puzzle is solved, the film's theme becomes clear.

This is essentially an extreme story of "pushing a daughter to greatness."

As the heroine confronts her father: "Would you love me if I weren't beautiful?"

The father is a fascinating character.

In the second half of the film, there's a reference to the Circle of Cain in Dante's Divine Comedy —the circle for "betrayers of kin." Cain is the murderer in the Bible's first homicide, who killed his brother.

This allusion hints at three things:

First, the father's actions: he abandoned/murdered one deformed daughter and treated the other as his personal work of art.
He cheated with his patients, betraying his marriage and the mother.
He isn't a good person by social morals, yet he demands physical and mental perfection from his daughter.
When he sees his daughter eating sloppily, he's furious; when faced with her nudity, he snaps, "Do you think this shocks me? Isn't this what I see all day?"

This isn't just the director gratuitously showing skin.
Nude women in the plastic surgery room are ordinary to the father as a doctor. He doesn't feel emotion toward the bodies he's about to cut open—he only looks for where to make incisions, which is exactly how he views his daughter.

The Circle of Cain mentioned earlier is located in the ninth circle of hell—Cocytus, the Ice Lake. As the teacher in the film says, "People here lack love and human warmth." As he speaks, the camera cuts to the heroine.

Second: those starved of love do crazy things.
After killing her boyfriend, who might no longer love her, the heroine clings to a sliver of hope to seek her father's love.

Yes, driven by compensatory psychology, what she desires most is her father's love. Of course, I believe she knows it's unlikely. The allusion to Cain also hints at her third act—patricide.

After eliminating the father who forced her to be beautiful, she sees ugliness in the glass reflection.

Maria stops responding to Elain. The kind,懦弱 side of the heroine disappears, or perhaps the two finally merge: the imperfect Maria vanishes, and the powerful Elain is no longer perfect.

I've seen people debate whether Elain is schizophrenic or haunted, and whether it's Elain or Maria who disappears.

The film doesn't intend to give a clear answer because it's unnecessary and irrelevant.

What matters is that Maria/Elain stumbles home and curls up once again in the arms of her mother, the only one who loved her unconditionally.

It seems that the film has a low rating on Douban, but personally, I appreciate this kind of dark transformation where one can do whatever they want, much like the inexplicable thrill one gets from fanfiction...

The film starts with a dark and ominous foreshadowing, almost like a prelude to tragedy. The female lead, gaunt and pale, exudes the vibe of a tough girl with a cigarette in hand. She seems untouchable, but the director has tricked us—she is actually a weak, bullied girl. She faces bullying from boys, alienation from classmates, harsh treatment from her father, and, of course, the classic tragic female character—an unreliable best friend...

So, the weak girl can only go through the same monotonous day, watching her crush and best friend getting closer while she forces a smile, unable to even look at her father flirting with others. The only comfort she finds is in her best friend, who abandons her after an accident. Every day, the only thing she has to cling to is the bathtub and her own hands... Once a privileged rich kid, she now lives in a situation that contrasts sharply with her family's status, a truly conflicted character.

Perhaps it's this internal conflict that leads to powerful destruction. The weak girl develops a dark alter ego, and after a humiliating incident at a dance, this alter ego takes full control. The pale face now looks even more eerie, hinting that those who once humiliated her are about to pay. We didn't expect it to come so violently—she breaks the bully's leg, causes the best friend's accidental death, smashes the head of the guy she dreamed of, and finally kills her unfaithful father, who had been emotionally abusing her family.

Like a spring that snaps back after being compressed, the deeper the repression, the more extreme the rebound.

When the female lead finally crawls into her mother's embrace, the toxic family that once killed her deformed sister finally disappears...

Perhaps everyone has their mirror image, the one who despises the cruelty life has given them, covets desires that don’t belong to them, and hates all the harm they've suffered in the past. This person is always waiting to break through the shattered mirror. However, most people don’t have the courage to kiss that person—they just want to keep living. Isn’t that why we are still able to live peacefully?

When you feel the tremor of that person in the mirror, don’t hesitate, just look away.

There are no ghosts.

The victim and the avenger are two personalities of the same person.

The twin photo at the beginning makes the protagonist realize the existence of the other. Since she had never seen them before, the other must have either died or been abandoned, and thus formed a second personality, Ariam, which is a palindrome of Maria.

Everything that the second personality does is something Maria wants to do.

Killing the best friend, striking back at the bullies, being with the one she likes, killing the father—if it were a ghost, it would have already deceived the body, so there would be no need.

Unfortunately, even so, fate has never been kind.

No matter how you choose, everything is painful, and there is no better answer.

Endure or resist; what awaits her is endless pain. Fate pushes her forward and then consumes her.

In the end, she walks barefoot toward her mother, and her mother embraces her, giving her a brief moment of peace.

Just like many years ago, when the sisters were in their mother’s womb.

Then, born, and submerged into the abyss.

On Dissociative Identity Disorder ~ In a suffocating environment with friend betrayal and school bullying, Marianne splits into Elain. Elain's main mission is to protect Marianne from harm... Later, she goes on a rampage, a proper "brutal and gloomy personality".

Sister Elain's actions are fierce... She traps the host personality ~ stabs the betraying best friend, stabs the disobedient jerk, stabs the dark and perverted father. Okkk... The host personality can't bear to watch and chooses to hide ~

But? What's with the final stab at the deformed fetus? So confused... What's this even about? I really want to stab the screenwriter, the plot is so messy and frustrating 😓

The film's theme is relatively novel. The story revolves around the heroine Maria, who, under the patriarchal control of her father, lives a life of extreme inferiority and cowardice despite being beautiful and from a wealthy family, often bullied by classmates. When her mother was pregnant with twins, the father discarded the other child (Elain) at birth due to deformity. As Maria grows up, Elain appears in the mirror. Because of her own懦弱无能 (cowardice and incompetence), Maria can't handle difficult situations and chooses to swap with the fierce and泼辣 (bold) Elain, who then embarks on a path of revenge.

The ending shows the mother lying in the same bed with both daughters, leaving room for viewers to interpret the plot. Many other film reviews claim that due to her personality, the heroine splits into Elain, a complete opposite (dissociative identity disorder). However, regarding dissociative identity disorder, I prefer to see this as a sci-fi film. First, Maria initially has no idea about Elain's existence. It's too coincidental if a dissociative personality not only has a different name but also the same name as the discarded child. After Elain completes her revenge and is locked in the mirror, Maria disappears—or perhaps she doesn't disappear, but has merged with Elain. Thus, the Elain lying beside the mother in the ending also transforms into two people.

The improper distribution of power within the family is the root of all evil. It not only harms the weak but also the oppressors themselves, as all human emotions and understanding are mutual