Gemini

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.

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.

I was incredibly impressed by Shinya Tsukamoto's surreal cyberpunk classic 'Tetsuo', one of the most startling, original and disturbing movies of the last twenty years, and also knocked out by 'Tokyo Fist' his hyperkinetic and violent study of macho competition. Now, once again I'm impressed, this time by 'Gemini' his beautiful and haunting story of identity confusion, and sibling rivalry. The movie is said to be based on Edogawa Rampo's short story 'The Twins', but I've read it and it has virtually nothing to do with this film. Whatever, it doesn't matter, Tsukamoto has taken one or two ideas from Rampo's (excellent) story and expanded it into more interesting and inventive territory. Masahiro Motoki is brilliant in a duel role as the uptight bourgeois doctor and his malevolent criminal twin, and Ryo is beautifully enigmatic as his (apparently) amnesiac wife who is harboring a secret or two. 'Gemini' is a brilliant piece of film making, and I highly recommend it.

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.

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.