Seeing Double: Interview with Cha Cha for Twins’ Jim Wang and James Hsu

The precise production of their first feature film earned co-directors Jim Wang and Yang Yi-chien, producer James Hsu, and actress Huang Peijia their first Golden Horse Award nominations.

by Ada Tseng

At the Q&A following the 2012 Taipei Film Festival world premiere screening of Cha Cha for Twins, an audience member was convinced he had figured out the inspiration behind the high school coming-of-age film.

“The identical twins are based on you guys!” he declared in front of the entire theater, to the surprise of co-director Jim Wang and co-producer James Hsu.

Wang laughs. “No, no,” he remembers clarifying. “We’re not twins. We’re just both fat.”

Wang and Hsu, who recently visited the United States for Cha Cha for Twins’ screening at the inaugural Taiwan Film Showcase (a collaboration between UCSD and the San Diego Asian Film Festival), aren’t fat, but they also don’t look that much alike, other than their broad shoulders, short haircuts and glasses.

It’s actually screenwriter/co-director Yang Yi-chien who is an older identical twin sister in real life. Likewise, the film is told from the perspective of Poni, the older twin, about her relationship with her younger twin, Mini — both played by newcomer Huang Peijia. Poni, who desperately wants her peers to see her as a unique individual, cannot stand it when she falls for a boy who can’t tell her and Mini apart. The result is a comedy of errors between two jealous suitors, Yogurt (Lun Ou Yang) and Ping (Paul Chiang), who don’t realize they are pursuing different twin sisters.

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