This was a huge hit in Hong Kong both critically and commercially, a feat made especially impressive by the fact that it is an independent production made with a very low budget. Unfortunately this is the kind of film that I categorically dislike as it relies on an outdated understanding of mental illnesses and how they are treated in modern times. The fact that this is really more of a romantic film than one about mental patients in general doesn’t absolve it of responsibility in misleading a large audience and it is very obvious that at no point did the filmmakers ever consult with actual doctors or psychiatrists in making it.

When a woman in a public street in Hong Kong becomes agitated and starts to take off her clothes, Lok is one of the few people who tries to help her instead of gawking and taking videos. We learn that they are both mental patients in the same support group. Another girl also stops to help and leaves an impression on Lok. He later sees that girl is a neighbor and learns that her name is Yan. They develop a relationship, with Yan seemingly not minding that he has mental issues and she becomes his girlfriend. But Yan is imaginary and a product of Lok’s hallucinations. When a young psychology student arrives at Lok’s community center to offer counseling services, he is struck that she looks exactly like Yan. It so happens that this very real girl, Yip-Lam, is researching the phenomena of erotomania for her thesis. She is in need of a subject and of course Lok is the perfect candidate. Over the course of Yip-Lam interviewing Lok about his imaginary relationship, the two fall in love with each other, resulting in the absurd situation of Yip-Lam and Yan being rivals for Lok’s affection.

Early on the film, I noted the childish nature of the relationship between Yip-Lam and Lok and wondered at the amateurish effort to depict a romance. This was of course a fake-out with even the title of the film appearing only after we realize that Yan is a product of Lok’s imagination. That was nicely done and I also appreciated how the real Yip-Lam is a completely different person from the ingénue Yap and isn’t above offering sex to advance her career. Unfortunately this pretty much exhausts the list of the film’s strong points. Everything else about the film is pretty much awful, beginning with the premise that obviously comes from an artist’s understanding of Freud without bothering to consult with any actual experts. For example, the film throws around the term erotomania to describe Lok’s condition. But in real life the term doesn’t refer to love for an imaginary person. It refers to the more plausible scenario where the patient imagines that someone real, usually a celebrity, is deeply in love with the patient or is in a relationship with the patient, whereas the real celebrity might not even know the patient at all. It seems that this is a condition that is more commonly seen in female patients.

The film’s compounds this fundamental error with ever more mistakes and misconceptions. While counselling Lok for example, Yip-Lam advises that taking medication might stave off his hallucinatory episodes but to solve his problems permanently he needs to confront his fundamental inner conflict. Needless to say this is the kind of medical advice that is issued only in the imagination of artistic types and not by any real medical professional. Then there is how the entire plot about Yip-Lam also falling for Lok is a huge ethics violation. While her teachers and the other staff at the community center rightfully condemn her actions, the attitude of the film itself and the audience reaction it expects to evoke is how romantic this is. I find this gross and extremely off-putting as this is not anything that could be construed as a healthy relationship. Even how the film builds up the character of Lok is misleading. He is shown as being the perfect gentleman, clean cut, well-mannered and perfectly capable of holding down a job and living independently. His one problem are his hallucinatory episodes, so we can easily sympathize with him. This is very much not what living with mental illness is like, as such attacks are debilitating, physically exhausting and not something that you can just shrug off.

With all forms of fiction, some artistic license is to be expected. The action scenes of Hollywood movies are not at all indicative of what real combat is like and anyone who knows anything about computers are well aware of how ridiculous computer hacking scenes in movies usually are. But in most of these cases, we don’t expect realism from those movies just as we know that superheroes aren’t real. Here however I fear that the director Kiwi Chow does believe that this scenario is plausible and wants others to believe it too. These misconceptions are at the very center of the film, take away those and you don’t have much of a film left. For these reasons, I find this to be an awful film and would not recommend anyone watch it.