Gemini is about Jill, a personal assistant, who goes through a horrendous forty-eight hours after people begin to question the nature of her relationship with her boss and friend, a high profile actor and celebrity. It is a neo noir film that ultimately is more style than substance although it is an initially absorbing character study. Lola Kirke plays Jill, and Zoe Kravitz plays her boss, Heather.
Gemini’s preview got my attention by prominently featuring John Cho and Michelle Forbes, who were in Columbus, one of my favorite movies in 2017. So I was pleasantly surprised that I was interested in the movie in spite of the fact that they aren’t prominent in the plot. Cho doesn’t appear until thirty-two minutes into the ninety-two minute movie, and Forbes only appears in a single scene though these actors probably gave more than what was on the page.
Visually it is a beautiful shot film. The beginning indicating a skewed perspective of the characters gradually adjusted to the right side up is parallel to what the narrative plans to do with this story. The colors are very cool—a lot of blues and pastels. Despite being on the job, Jill is a passenger, passive, reacting whereas her boss is in the driver’s seat both literally and figuratively.
The acting is engaging, and the characters are likeable. In the movies that I’ve seen with Kravitz, she usually plays the sexy love interest, the kind of supporting character that exists solely to benefit the lead so it was nice to see her as a supporting character that was actually the lead in the main character’s life. Jessica Parker Kennedy, who is famous for her role as Nora on The Flash, appears briefly in the beginning of the film as a fan. My favorite scene is the second scene between Kirke and Nelson Franklin, who is best known for his work in sitcoms such as Black-ish and New Girl. He provides a meta cinematic analysis of Jill’s predicament, which is of course actually a commentary on the movie that we are watching, but it gets underscored with a puncturing of the gravity of the situation with a mortification point that feels so real and honest that if the movie had more moments like this, the end may not have felt so anti-climactic and like a cheat.
Gemini’s biggest mistake was taking itself too seriously and starting at a ten.
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I watch too many movies so I knew that Gemini was really belaboring the danger point by constantly bringing up murder, kill and guns and expected some type of switcheroo. It did a great job of creating tension and paranoia. Even my mother, who was not watching the movie and is not the best at picking up cues, responded to a particular plot point, “Get your own gun.” There is obviously an okie doke, shell game being set up, it is just a matter of figuring out who is setting it up and the motivation; however there is zero motivation or grand conspiracy. My story was way more sinister than the filmmakers were going for. I thought that Heather noticed how similar that she looked to her fan, consciously set up Jill to take a fall for the murder so she could away with her girlfriend and live a peaceful life with all her money.
Instead Gemini wants a murder mystery without any long term consequences, including emotional, which is why the denouement feels so anti-climatic and like a complete punk out, let down. This was not a minor misunderstanding. Jill was the focus of a police manhunt and accused of being a psycho murderer, but a punch and establishing boundaries makes everything ok, and I’m supposed to believe that now Jill is a woman in charge of her destiny and life simply for surviving the cutthroat world of show biz and the criminal justice system. Nope. Sorry, but for me to believe that she has finally established herself as a strong individual, I need her to quit her job and sue her ex-friend/boss or the story should have made it seem as if she was in on it too then had second thoughts when the heat got to be too much. This movie can’t have a mystery and have viewers respect Jill by the end.
If Gemini had eased up on the sinister atmosphere, especially by deleting the ex-boyfriend character, and emphasized throughout the film what it did in Kirke and Franklin’s scene and Kirke and Kravitz’s gun exchange scene, that these are self-important people who sound like the movies they make then puncture their inflated egos with humor by showing them as human beings completely incapable of shoplifting gum, then the ending would not have fallen as flat as it did. Also everyone seems too poised and unruffled at the end of the film, which I know is a crucial part of show biz, but it occurred too soon. It should have appeared that way when the interview started, not before. It was going for Raymond Chandler when it should have been aiming for Veep. I feel as if Cho also understood the direction that the movie was taking considering his final scene.
If Gemini had taken that route, Jill’s amateur sleuthing would be less annoying. If there was really a cold-blooded killer, she was acting hella reckless and as if she was guilty. There was one point when she was on the run that I was not even sure if she still had her bag; however I did like the use of Chekhov’s motorcycle. Instead things just happen and everything is totally fine. While I believe that a celebrity could experience zero ramification for killing someone, especially if the victim was a stalker who entered the celebrity’s property without permission, I don’t believe that a well-placed, “My bad, sorry,” would get you out of the friendship dog house. Jill was two degrees from a mug shot, finger printing and a night in jail. I needed an emotional catharsis that a single punch to the face cannot fill: an epic read with a bookstore showing that she is promoting her tell all book and now she is making a film about her ideal. Anything but what I got. In the end, she has completely erased whatever identity she had to retain a job that is more demeaning than it initially seemed to be.
Gemini proves that the majority of your film can be great, but if your ending sucks, you should not have bothered. It makes M. Night Shylaman’s lesser works seem like epics. The story was a complete and utter waste of acting and visual talent. Skip it!