Mark Schilling Soseiji (Gemini) Review

[Mark Schilling]

Soseiji (Gemini)
By Mark Schilling


Maybe I'm weird, but I've always found Shinya Tsukamoto's films to be more
smile-inducing than distress-producing. "Tetsuo," "Tetsuo II" and "Tokyo
Fist" struck some as the cinematic equivalent of punk rock: a noisy, messy,
raging gob in the face of the convention (or, depending on your point of
view, all that's decent). But whereas punk was often more performance art
with a sardonic sneer than heartfelt rage against the machine, Tsukamoto
made every frame of his hyper-violent, hyper-metallic fantasies with a
white-hot sincerity. 
	At the same time, his sensibility was essentially that of a manga otaku,
meaning that he lived more in his florid comic-fed imagination than in any
dark impulses based on a twisted reality. It was this disjunction between
the extremity and intensity of the action -- the iron fists thundering into
bruised flesh, the gouts of blood spurting skyward -- and the Wile E.
Coyote-like resilience and persistence of the characters that I found
funny. 
	Nonetheless, I couldn't laugh at Tsukamoto's vision -- in his over-the-top
way he was expressing real feelings that many Japanese, as well as the rest
of us, keep carefully bottled up -- until the moment of explosion. He put
the angry id on the screen more nakedly and arrestingly than anyone else in
films -- and found himself being compared abroad to David Cronenburg and
David Lynch. At home, the reaction has been more muted  -- instead of a
genuine original like Tsukamoto, the local media has been more inclined to
talk up Shunji Iwai and others whose true talent is for fashionable
pastiche. 
	In his latest film, "Soseiji" (Gemini), Tsukamoto has taken a turn away
from the highly personal art film to more mass-audience-friendly psycho
horror. In a way this is a relief -- Tsukamoto's films were in danger of
becoming as repetitious as a three straight sets of a three-chord punk act.
In a way this is also a letdown -- I was expecting him to wade defiantly
against the stream forever, even if it meant playing forever to the same
forty people in Eurospace. 
	The cynical might say that even otaku have to pay the rent. but "Soseiji"
is not a straight sell-out to Mammon. Tsukamoto has proclaimed himself a
great fan of the writer on whose short story the film is based: Edogawa
Rampo. He has also gone to great lengths to update his Taisho-era tale of
twin brothers separated at birth -- but united by fate -- for the end of
the millennium. Every aspect of the film, from the shaved eyebrows of the
main characters to the eerie gloom of the Meiji-era house in which the
story unfolds, has been painstakingly stylized to present a scarifying
unity. 
	Rampo courted comparison with Edgar Allan Poe (as his very pen name
makesclear) but though he went in for the Grand Guiginol theatrics of his
American idol, Rampo was also a master of the twist ending, ala O. Henry or
Arthur Conan Doyle. Tsukamoto's choice of Rampo's "Soseiji" as material for
his new film is, given his cutting-edge reputation in the West, a bit
quirky, to put it mildly. Imagine David Cronenburg doing a Sherlock Holmes
movie. 
	Tsukamoto puts his distinctive stamp on this material -- how could he not?
-- but when he goes over the top in characteristic ways the effect is at
times bizarrely comic. While some scenes are undeniably strong -- Tsukamoto
hasn't lost his touch for at-your-throat violence -- others are
unintentionally reminiscent of the "The Addam's Family Comes to Japan."
	 Dr. Yukio Daitokuji (Masahito Motoki) is running a prosperous practice
out of the rambling, shadowy old house, where he lives with his father,
mother and new wife Rin (Ryo [no last name]). With her pancake hairdo,
luscious lips, large, staring eyes and browless, angular face, Rin looks
like a sexy, space alien wasting away from a mysterious disease. She is, it
turns out, is suffering from the classic movie illness of amnesia, but a
larger problem starts to loom. A strange presence is haunting the house,
manifesting itself by its terrible smell. Then Father is found dead in his
study, mud crammed in his mouth. Shortly after enduring this trauma, Mother
encounters a werewolf-like creature in the corridor, dressed in
gaily-colored rags, with an ugly snake-like marking on its leg. As the
creature, who is a spitting image of her son, cartwheels (yes, cartwheels)
past her, she clutches at her heart. The next day Yukio and Rin are
attending another funeral. 
	The creature is Sutehiko (Motoki again), Yukio's twin brother, who was
abandoned by his parents and grew up in a nearby slum. (He writes his name,
appropriately, with the character for "discard.") Why did his parents,
well-off, well-educated people, do such a terrible thing? Well, there was
the age-old prejudice against twins -- twins births being considered
animalistic and plain bad karma. There was also that leg marking -- another
badge of shame for the more traditionally minded. 
	In any case, Sutehiko was found, as a baby, by the river and raised by a
troupe of entertainers. Living within sight and sound of his erstwhile
family, Sutehiko has had ample time and opportunity to nurse his resentment
-- and plot his revenge. Yukio, however, remains ignorant of his brother's
very existence, until one day in the garden, when he finds himself being
attacked by his own doppelganger and thrown down an abandoned well. With
Yukio out of the way, howling in pain and rage, Sutehiko decides to take
over his brother's life -- and his wife. Complications ensue, however, when
Rin begins to recall her past  -- and Sutehiko's place in it.
	Tsukamoto says in a program interview that he dislikes movies in which
black and white are clearly defined. In "Soseiji" he makes everyone morally
gray -- and uncomfortably creepy. Masahiro Motoki does yeoman's work in his
dual role, but his facial contortions as Sutehiko, raining loud abuse down
on the degraded-but-defiant Yukio, come straight from the D.W. Griffith
school of Victorian villainy. As Rin, former fashion model Ryo is a walking
poster for Ghoul Chic -- and an unlikely object of desire, but she does
impress as a suitable mate for her equally cadaverous hubby. 
	"Soseiji" succeeds well enough in its aim of making the skin crawl, while
holding audience attention until its too-clever ending. For his next film,
however, I hope that Tsukamoto goes, not to the book shelf, but back to the
primal junk yard of his imagination. We need him more as Tetsuo than a
sub-Rampo.