Sôseiji

First things first: somebody needs to officially release this film in the United States. I see three thousand copies of Dude, Where's My Car every time I step outside, but when I want to see a beautiful and interesting film like Gemini, I have to track down a dubious bootleg on eBay. Pitiful.

The plot concerns a rich doctor suddenly thrown into a well by a man who looks exactly like him. The mysterious doppelganger takes over the doctor's identity, his household, and his wife, all the while laughing and taunting down the well at his imprisoned twin. As the mysterious lookalike gradually reveals the truth to the doctor, it becomes less and less certain which of the twins is the "hero" and which is the "villain."

Shinya Tsukamoto isn't a great director yet, but he's getting there. With Gemini he reveals a tremendous versatility, combining moments of sedate drama with hyperkinetic sequences of terror and joy. The actors are all magnificent (especially Masahiro Motoki in a complex double role), the cinematography is stunning, and the story is thoroughly intriguing and well told. It's not the best movie ever made by any means, but here and there Tsukamoto manages a few moments of real greatness, scenes where we genuinely become one with these characters and their needs. Watch the doctor, defeated and filthy at the bottom of his well, beg for a release from his suffering; watch the wife burst into tears as she remembers her past existence.

Tsukamoto knows what he's doing. He hasn't quite achieved true greatness yet, but one day he may just break through.

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.

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.

Stunning cinematography, moments of serene bliss cutting effortlessly to shocking scenes more akin to his earlier Tetsuo imagery. Tour de force and evidence of a rapidly growing range and depth. So so plot though, the beast within, Jekyll and Hyde, Janus, that sort of thing.

Shinya Tsukamoto, the man behind the Tetsuo films, Snake of June and Tokyo Fist takes on Edogawa Rampo story and turns in one of the most perfect marriages of sound and image I've ever run across not to mention one of the creepiest films I've seen in a very very long time.

Yukio is a famous doctor who won fame treating the war wounded. He is much in demand by the wealthy and so has little time for the poor in a nearby slum where the plague has been running rampant. Yukio is also recently married to a young woman he met by the riverside and who is suffering from amnesia.Soon a dark figure is lurking about and after Yukio's father dies under mysterious and unnatural circumstances things begin to take a turn for the worse.

What can I say? This is a creepy little thriller that will haunt you and keep you feeling off balance. Every shot seems to have been perfectly designed for maximum beauty. The soundtrack is a wonderful mixture of sound and music calculated to give the sense of things being not right. The effect of the sound plus the image is a sense of dread and unease even when there is nothing out of the ordinary in the frame, few thrillers or horror films have ever been able to make you feel so off by doing so little.

Adding to it all is the plot which I'm told takes the Rampo story as a jumping off point and then spins it out with new complications. Give it big points for its ability to keep you guessing as to what is going on even if you know whats going on. Having read on the film I knew what was happening and yet I still had to entertain numerous other possibilities. This movie masterfully makes you wonder about what is real and what is not.

I really liked this movie great deal. I don't know if its fully on its own terms or simply that its not another Japanese or Asian horror film with a long hair female ghost lurking about, honestly I don't care because the film is just so damn good it wouldn't really matter anyway.

See this movie.