Review: Gemini

[Aaron Gerow]

Finally got some time to put some reviews on the web, so here are two of 
my "recent" reviews that have been put on the site.

Aaron Gerow

**********

Gemini

Japanese title: Soseiji 
Production Company: Sedic International 
Release: 15 September 1999 
Length: 84 min. 
Format: 35 mm 
Color: Color 

Staff: 
       Director: Tsukamoto Shinya 
       Screenplay:Tsukamoto Shinya 
       Based on the novel by: Edogawa Ranpo 
       Photography: Tsukamoto Shinya 
       Editor: Tsukamoto Shinya 
       Music: Ishikawa Tadashi 
       Executive Producer: Nakazawa Toshiaki 
       Producer: Nishimura Daishi 

Cast: 
       Yukio/Sutekichi: Motoki Masahiro 
       Rin: Ryo 
       Shigefumi: Tsutsui Yasutaka 
       Mitsue: Fujimura Shiho 
       Kakubei: Maro Akaji 
       Rich man: Takenaka Naoto 
       Beggar: Ishibashi Renji 
       Man with sword: Asano Tadanobu 

Review: 

A Drift Between Human, Subhuman

Humanity has built great cities and flown to the moon, but to Tsukamoto 
Shinya it remains as animalistic as ever. His cult classic The Iron Man 
("Tetsuo," 1989),
featuring characters who slowly devolve (evolve?) into grotesque metallic 
beasts, presented the industrial city not as the victory over primitive 
life, but its re-creation or
even apex. Even in a film like Tokyo Fist (1995), a movie without any 
rusty sci-fi creatures, the brutally physical and animalistic side of 
human beings continued to rear
its ugly head underneath a civilized veneer.

His new work, Gemini (the Japanese title can simply be translated as 
"twins"), loosely based on a Edogawa Ranpo story, pursues the same theme 
in what is a new
territory for Tsukamoto-- a story set in the late Meiji era (1868-1912) 
with no stop-motion photography and no industrial setting.

The conflict between the civilized and animalistic sides of humanity is 
here initially literalized in the class conflict between the rich and the 
poor. On the wealthy side,
there's Daitokuji Yukio (Motoki Masahiro), a former military doctor who 
has taken over a successful practice from his father. On the other, the 
destitute denizens of a
nearby ghetto whom Yukio and his family disdain and often opt not to 
treat if they're in the way of a more dignified patient.

What upsets this clan ensconced in their fortress-like home, putting in 
conflict that which had been separated, is the arrival of two figures. 
The first is Rin (Ryo), the
beautiful wife of Yukio whose mysterious origins hint at the appearance 
of something foreign--one could call it desire--within this repressed 
family. The second is
Sutekichi (again Motoki), Yukio's long-lost rejected twin who, bent on 
revenge, first secretly causes the strange deaths of his parents and then 
pushes Yukio in the
garden well in order to take over his life and his wife.

Tsukamoto uses color, acting, and make-up to establish the contrast 
between these worlds. While everything in the Daitokuji compound is dark 
and colorless, the
ghetto is defined by shocking combinations of primary colors. Its 
liveliness is translated into the acting: while Motoki as Yukio is a 
study in repressed movement, as
Sutekichi (before he takes over Yukio's role) he is practically 
performing a primitively violent and erotic dance reminiscent of ankoku 
butoh, the "dance of darkness"
which is here referenced in the person of the dancer-actor Maro Akaji, 
who plays Sutekichi's adopted father.

Yet as in many of Tsukamoto's films, it is the make-up and the costumes 
that does the most to define his world. If the Daitokuji's generally wear 
the normal clothes of
the Meiji era, those in the ghetto don an other-worldly combination of 
rags and industrial detritus. Their more "liberated" relation to 
physicality is emphasized by both their
hard, rock-like hair styles and by Sutekichi's scar, the mark that 
emphasizes his bodiliness and which must be hidden if he wishes to 
masquerade as Yukio.

In contrasting these two sides to human beings, Tsukamoto is not 
directing an epic battle in which one wins over the other: Yukio and 
Sutekichi are, after all, mirror
images who, since it turns out that Rin had actually once been 
Sutekichi's lover, love the same woman.

Moreover, neither the rich nor the poor come out as representing the 
positive values of "humanity." Not only do all the rich women sport 
bizarre, flying-saucer shaped hair
styles, but in a brilliant move, all the actors appear with barely any 
eyebrows. From the beginning, we are facing a world without the 
comfortable anchors of normalcy (a
sense emphasized by the raucous music and deafening sound track) or even 
of the human face.

The final conflict between the two brothers, realized when Yukio, himself 
forced into an animalistic existence in the well, reemerges, is then not 
a means of resolving
their oppositions, nor is it a case of one repressing the other. The two 
sides are, in effect, joined--not in harmony, but in a recognition of 
contradiction within the human
self.

Like many of Tsukamoto's movies, Gemini is a disturbing work, one which 
assaults the audience with extremes of style and sound. But it is not 
without its own version
of hope. More than in his other work, Tsukamoto here seems to place some 
faith in love, here between Rin and her two men. 

Yet it is still love that prompts this fratricidal fight, a love that can 
only be realized by wandering through hell itself. Even in humanity's 
highest emotion, Tsukamoto still
finds the primitive side of homo sapiens.

Reviewed by Aaron Gerow 

Originally appeared in The Daily Yomiuri, 16 September 1999, p. 9 

 Copyright 1999: The Daily Yomiuri and Aaron Gerow