Recensioni de* critic*

Katz fails to generate much suspense from the mystery; rather, he carries over the moody inertia of the movie’s first act to the rest of the story. As a result Jill's investigation never develops any sense of urgency. This makes Gemini feel like the first draft of a movie that could have been developed into something more resonant.

Although rife with wry nods to familiar tropes and meta-commentary on the making of mysteries, Gemini is not so much an ironic perversion of the genre as a woozy, Instagram-y evocation. It resurrects the ghosts of L.A. noirs past and filters them through a neon-slicked lens, constructing a sleek thriller around distinctly millennial themes of celebrity and identity.

It's as much a catalogue of Los Angeles’s moods and settings as it is a drama; for that matter, it depends on a calculated conflict of style and substance. Working with the cinematographer Andrew Reed, Katz adorns the action with colorful neon lights and gliding camera moves. . . . Unfortunately, that palette and its single-toned mood form more or less the entirety of the viewing experience.

At its best, the film has a dreamy atmosphere with compelling performances. Along with its twisted sense of humor, there is no doubt that the film is more than just a monochromatic Pinterest mood board. And yet, it doesn’t really push things to the next level either. It relies on insinuations and mystery to carry the audience.

It most impresses as a piece of clean, confident visual storytelling. Early two-person scenes excite in their staging: When Jill pours drinks for herself and Heather, the camera glides smoothly between kitchen and living room. But as Jill’s investigative journey takes her to more remote locales, the dialogue disappears and Jill becomes a determined, isolated figure in the frame.

Mr. Katz understands that that blur is seductive. But there is always more — even in Los Angeles — and so, as his desultory mystery unfolds, he turns his attention elsewhere. He lingers on beauty and catches the light at dusk, searching and sometimes finding an elusive city that has always been there for those who bother to look.

Jill traverses many facets of L.A. . . . and Katz informs her quest with a poignant existential quality. He frequently blends Jill in with her settings, often as a reflection within a reflection, suggesting a person who’s become a ghost of their own life, which Kirke casually physicalizes in a performance of careful, intense, and enraptured inhabitation.

As far as this movie goes, that’s entertainment. Not enough is fresh or at stake in Katz’s catalogue of La-La Land amorality, no matter how artfully he wraps it in a dull glare or cloudy daylight and glowing nightlights.

Katz's cool-toned city setting suggests the architectural awareness of a film like Los Angeles Plays Itself, Point Blank and a sprinkling of early Curtis Hanson, with its mishmash of high modernism, art deco and urban sprawl. But Katz flips the switch on the symbiotic, ambiguous relationship between the leads – looking at the power dynamic between two women and allowing them, refreshingly, to lead his neo-noir.

Winding hills, gated homes, seedy bars—elegant all, but fascinating most in their near unremarkability, like the broadly pretty appeal of an Instagram filter. An elegant and very 21st century-appropriate detective who-dunit, Gemini and its non-judgmental insouciance etches Kirke and Kravitz's characters and their relationship into sharper relief and proves highly quaffable, even when the film's conclusion tumbles clumsily into place.

Katz's latest, Gemini, once again tells the story of an ordinary nobody (Lola Kirke, marvelous) pitched without warning into a pulpy, lurid whodunit, a larger-than-life noir teeming delightfully with hardboiled detectives, unseemly paparazzi, and double-crossing femmes fatales. An uncanny, exquisite synthesis of naturalism and genre, the film is a heady cocktail of high style and lo-fi whose sum effect is irresistible.

Katz, who also wrote Gemini, keeps the clock ticking but also rarely passes up on an opportunity to gently poke generic conventions for a laugh. Kirke's game, but special mention has to go as well to Nelson Franklin for his amusing turn as a frustrated screenwriter.