Filmex's Twin Falls Idaho Review September 6/99

While the best film I've seen this year, "The Dreamlife of Angels" is so far beyond everything else I've seen this year, to the point where I am willing to concede right now nothing will surpass it, I saw a film Friday that at least approached the league of the transcendent "Angels".

Once every few years a film comes along like an "Exotica", a "The Sweet Hereafter", a "Breaking the Waves" or an "Underground" which touches one in places that one never knew one even HAD places. They so connect on some heretofore unknown human level that they simply change you and the way you view not only cinema, but, life in� general. "The Dreamlife of Angels" bruised my soul in ways
that I still cannot articulate effectively, hence, my failure to act as advocate for it here before now.

On Friday I saw "Twin Falls Idaho" and I am ecstatic to say it at least took me to the outskirts of the community that "Angels' inhabits. What is particularly encouraging is that this film is an American creation, not a French film, not an Atom Egoyan film. It was written and directed by identical twins, Michael and Mark Polish.

Roger Ebert mentioned once in a review that Americans make films about plots, while Europeans make films about people. Well, here is one American film that is a haunting examination of three people, a pair of conjoined (Siamese) twins and the hooker they summon one day for a birthday celebration.

The conjoined twins are hauntingly portrayed by the Polish brothers, and the call girl is powerfully played in a stunning debut by Michele Hicks. The twins have checked themselves into a seedy hotel, and we meet them when "Penny" does, and it is really through Penny's eyes and journey of emotion that the story unfolds.

At times evocative of "Elephant Man", DePalma's "Sisters", Cronenberg's "Dead Ringers", "Twin Falls" (the brothers are named Blake and Francis Falls) is occasionally comic but never less than quietly heartbreaking� While initially thrown off balance by her introduction to the unusual pair, Penny's compassion and understanding is remindful of Anthony Hopkin's kind and sympathetic doctor in "The Elephant Man". And, the gentleness and concern that passes between the two brothers, the turned heads and whispers into one another's ear, help give the film a hauntingly mysterious solitude that is all but nonexistent in Hollywood films.

Shot in downtown Los Angeles, the bleak and muted color tones in the striking cinematography give the hotel and environs more of a New York skid row feel than anything Californian. LA has never looked quite like this before.

And, with superb supporting characterizations by Patrick Bauchau, Lesley Ann Warren, William Katt, Holly Woodlawn and (I never thought I would ever say this) Garrett� Morris, the film displays a humanity and originality that is simply all too rare.

Vivid proof that a film can be exciting and mesmerizing while being simultaneously serene and contemplative, this is one of the most heartbreakingly haunting glimpses of loneliness ever captured, ironically cast against the shadow of two characters that can never be alone.

I guarantee you will never forget the Falls brothers, or the sweet Edie Sedwick/Louise Brooks fawn, Penny, that comes to care for them. A remarkable experience, and an American one at that. I have no idea what the Polish brothers might attempt next, but, if they examine their next subject with the calm eye, and non-sensationalistic, non-exploitative prism they display here, I can hardly wait.