Gemini (Aaron Katz, 2017): USA

Reviewed by Juan Salcedo. Viewed at the 2017 AFI Film Festival.

Gemini, the quite unpredictable and amazing story of an assistant and her famous actress. I have a couple quarrels with this film except they all involve personal bias.

For one, the soundtrack really bothers me. At first I really liked it when the title screen popped up and it gave me a positive impression of what it would be like. But then the movie moved on. I know this movie is strictly all about LA but that’s exactly what I hated about the score, it sounded much too “LA”. It felt pretentious like it was working hard to sound hip with all the hopping snares and percussive trap sounds. It annoyed me after an hour for sure.

Otherwise the story was quite intriguing and I enjoyed that I didn’t really know what was going to happen. I also enjoyed Aaron Katz’ little movie within a movie bit where he explain to the main protagonist Jill(Lola Kirke) what he would think about if he were writing a script about the same situation she was dealing with. Zoe Kravits also really messes with everyone when she decides to be an actress with a fan who obsessively kills her at the beginning right after we begin to like her. Damn actresses.

I like LA but not enough to fully enjoy this movie because the soundtrack just bugs me. Watch the movie, you’ll probably like it, I liked aspects of it, but if you’re like me you’ll probably hate it.