Gemini

Great acting cast . decent production. good direction. . .

This film is based on a story by Edogawa Rampo, a japanese writer who was so enamoured of Edgar Allen Poe that he even took on his name. This Film is the best evidence I've seen of Poe heavy influence. The twins, the well, the wife.... at times I was reminded of "Tell-Tale Heart", "Cask of Amontillado" and "Fall of the House of Usher". Yet the film's art direction and directorial style took these themes in brilliant new directions. I loved the sound design in the early part of the film using Bulgarian(?) female chorus voices to punctuate the terror of the dark house as the wife searches for the father-in-law. The hair and make-up on the wife made her both beautiful and poisonous at the same time. A uniquely creepy film.

After having been impressed by the Tetsuo series, Gemini was all I was hoping for and much more. The cinematography is some of the most beautiful and evocative I've seen, with wonderful use of colour, light and design. Though I'd been told this movie was not "cyberpunk" like testsuo, in a way it had a similar ethic, questioning "what makes a person a person", although in this case it's more about what makes one "good or evil". I saw it the same night as I saw another popular Japanese horror, "The Ring", which curiously also features a well, but I found Gemini much more sinister and frightening.

The Japanese trademark in horror pictures is fully underlined in this production, the stunning visual is the prominence, the young director Shin'ya Tsukamoto introduces many unusual elements that boost how he displays his newest concept.

This macabre tale takes place post WWI around twenties when a well-born young doctor Yukio returns of the war and starting clinical exercise to cater wealthy clients, the he enchants by a girl called Rin naked at the river, even knowing that such girl actually is poverty-stricken from slum, even under letdown of his parents he marries her.

However Rin previously had a relationship with a guy extremally resemblance called Sutekishi a sort of orphan found in a basket at river by a poor man who raised him ever since, he becomes a thief, being rejected by his stepfather, he lost Rin who now lives with Yukio in a upper-class family, Sutekishi sudden appears scarring deadly Yukio's parents and trapping him at old pit, posing as Yukio henceforth, he keeping alive his brother at pit for a while, strangely the twin brothers will slowing changing their behaviors, something like backward process each one taking on each other's identity, sadly the movie stays inconclusive, letting to the viewers seek the answer at your leisure.

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First watch: 2022 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.

A film of extremes.

"Tetsuo" and its sequel were ripping bouts of cinematic mayhem. This film, "Gemini", represents a stunning turnabout for the director who applies a sure, delicate hand to an unnerving mystery.

A doctor in 1910 Japan lives a seemingly perfect life; he is handsome, he is married to a beautiful (albeit perplexing and inscrutable) woman and he is a renowned doctor.

The deaths of his parents send the doctor down a spiral of madness and violence. His wife grows more distant and enigmatic. He loses his grip on reality but the nightmarish events seem to spring from his own hand...

Frequently the imagery is rigorously symmetrical, composed with a great deal of poetry and ethereal beauty. Many of the shots are masterpieces of Japanese design. The effect is like a spiderweb where all the strands are perfectly aligned and no two edges seem to deviate from the basic construction. Even in the most tranquil image, the director creates a sense of palpable menace, as though the air is tinged with the smells of blood and gore even though the shot may be of a perfectly kept garden.

On this elegant framework the director lays on stunning moments of violence and revelatory mayhem. Besides the visceral elements, there is a great deal of psychic violence in the film. The audience witnesses the mental descent of the doctor so delicately and precisely that it seems that we can see the hairs rising on the back of his neck.

An unsettling and very rewarding film.