Release date: October 2012
Tong-hyun and Sang-hyun are Siamese
twins who have not been separated (ignore the film poster, they are still
attached). The twins live in total seclusion in a creapy old house with their
father, until Tong-hyun decides he wants to publish a book telling their story.
The father brings in a ditzy young woman, Seong-ah, to do the artwork and
Tong-hyun manages to hide the fact he has two heads (actually, two faces on
opposite sides of a conjoined head, a condition called cephalopagus, rarely
survives birth), but she eventually discovers the truth. In the meantime, his
book will be published and he becomes a major celebraty. Still, what he really
wants is to be normal (and to lose Sang-hyun).
Some interesting make-up and
cinematography tricks were employed to create this realistic appearing case of cephalopagus
Siamese twins; unfortunately the depiction left all of us with a major ick
feeling while watching the film. What the director had in mind for this film never
becomes clear and she is all over the map—is it a horror film? A thriller? A
fantasy? A drama? A message film? The film fails to tell its story well at all.
The eternal cheerfulness of the female artist, the publicity feeding frenzy, a
lot of aspects of the film made us laugh when it was not supposed to be funny. A
much more nuanced and cinematically satisfying depiction of the struggles of the
disabled has been done, for example, in one of my favorite films, Oasis.
My take: no stars
Tong-hyun, in a vampirish
hood, meets his new
artist-collaborator, Seong-ah
(Ryoo Deok-hwan and Nam
Sang-mi).
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