Shinya Tsukamoto's latest work is a bit of a departure for the director of such over-the-top cult films as Tetsuo: Iron Man (1989). Though punctuated by his trademark kinetic camera work, this moody gothic horror film has the sort of brittle formalism more common in Japanese domestic dramas of the 1940s and 1950s. Dr. Yukio Daitokuji (Masahiro Motoki) is a well-to-do doctor living in a wealthy neighborhood located near a shantytown. He lives in a gorgeous old house along with his father, mother, and beautiful young wife Rin (Ryo). The couple seems happy, but Rin's lack of a past, due to amnesia, is a source of anxiety for the socially conscious doctor. The rigid respectability of the couple's upstanding bourgeois life shatters when a bizarre rag-wearing man kills off Daitokuji's parents in sudden and gruesome manners. The terror gets ratcheted up a notch when the mysterious assailant throws Daitokuji into a deep well on the family grounds and then reveals himself to be physically identical to the young doctor. The stranger assumes Daitokuji's identity by making passionate love with his wife and threatening to kill his patients. Tsukamoto brilliantly juxtaposes the oppressive opulence of the upper class, characterized by deathly silences and Kubrick-like compositions, with the grubby, desperate world of the slums, whose residents could have populated The Road Warrior (1981). While Tsukamoto's fascination with revenge, doppelgangers, and male rage, as seen in Tokyo Fist (1995) and Bullet Ballet (1998), are clearly present in this work, it also showcases the director's growing stylistic maturity. This film was screened at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Review
Perhaps the most mature and accomplished film to date for the ever-unpredictable Shinya Tsukamoto, Gemini is a hauntingly low-key voyage into the dark realm of identity loss and lost love. Moving ever more away from the frenetic camera work that defined his early breakthrough features, Tsukamoto here goes for a more refined, quiet terror that proves as effective at building a sense of impending dread as his earlier works were at shocking audiences with audacious abandon. Though die-hard Tetsuo: The Iron Man fans may at first be dismayed at the somber tone struck early on, the opening images and story trajectory prove that, even if Gemini isn't as seductively manic as Tsukamoto's previous films, it still contains the same, if not more, horrific energy. With a hypnotic tone and visual scheme that lulls viewers into a chilled trance, the well-timed outbursts of nightmarish imagery give the impression of a waking nightmare captured on celluloid. With cold, stark compositions that invoke memories of Stanley Kubrick, Gemini consistently maintains its dormant menace throughout as Chu Ishikawa's low-key score delivers appropriate chills while avoiding the "jump cues" familiarly associated with the genre. Combine these two highly effective methods with a cultural critique of the internal void brought on by wealth and the result is a visually rich and viscerally terrifying film that will no doubt send chills down the spine of even the most jaded of horror fans. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Gemini (also known as Sôseiji) is a 1999 horror film by Shinya Tsukamoto, loosely based on a Edogawa Ranpo story, pursues his theme of the brutally physical and animalistic side of human beings rearing its ugly head underneath a civilized veneer, present in previous films like Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) and Tokyo Fist (1995), 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.
Plot
Tokyo. 1910. Dr. Daitokuji Yukio (Masahiro Motoki), a former military doctor who has taken over a successful practice from his father and treats plague victims, is living a charmed life: he is a respected young doctor with a successful practice and Rin (Ryo), a beautiful wife. His only problem is that she suffers from amnesia, and her past is unknown.
However, things begin to fall apart. Both his parents dying suddenly, killed by a mysterious stranger who looks just like him. His relationship with his wife worsens after he chose to cure the mayor instead of destitute denizens of nearby ghettos. While isolated from his relatives, he one day faces the mysterious stranger who turns out to be his long-lost rejected twin, Sutekichi (again Motoki). Bent on revenge, Sutekichi throws him into the garden's well and takes over his life and his wife.
The final conflict between the two brothers is realized when Yukio, forced into an animalistic existence in the well, reemerges, prompting the fratricidal fight for the love of the same woman, since it turns out (while he takes over Yukio's role) that Rin had actually once been Sutekichi's lover.
Documentary
A behind the scenes documentary was produced and directed by Takashi Miike. The documentary is 17 minutes long.[1]
