"A heinous crime tests the complex relationship between a tenacious personal assistant and her Hollywood starlet boss. As the assistant unravels the mystery, she must confront her own understanding of friendship, truth, and celebrity." That's the IMDB squib for "Gemini" (2017), a 90-minute whodunit or whahappened set in L.A. My blurb would be: "A dead body attracts cops and tests loyalties in a moneyed, motorcycled Movieland enclave where three women of various ethnicities have been playing the elusive lesbian triangle. Without sex, violence, or criminal interference, the perp comes clean with minimal fuss." See it starting Friday at Alamo Drafthouse.
Stalwart Jill (Lola Kirke) is the put-upon personal assistant of the spineless Heather (Zo� Kravitz), who kicks off the intrigue by refusing last-minute to film some unnamed Hollywood feature that depends on her unique star power. Kravitz is such a dud onscreen, it's hard to credit she could carry a film, and it's a relief when she winds up dead 30 minutes in. That's not really a spoiler, since her death is a foregone conclusion after production's halted and two guys named Devon (Reeve Carney) and Greg (Nelson Franklin) keep threatening to kill her, although we know that's something Americans say without really meaning it.
We don't actually see the disrupted production, either because it would cost too much to hire the space and actors necessary, or because lesbians are best filmed in a vacuum. The sets we do see are mostly domestic spaces, architecturally vintage and pleasing to the aficionado of old Hollywood, plus one insanely designer hilltop aerie with glass walls, plus a "cabin" that has nothing in common with the humble shacks Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart used to hide out in. This is the realm of the fantasy lesbian who moves through unpeopled spaces pristine as a weasel in winter.
With Heather out of the way, Jill becomes our focus, and frankly, she was already stealing scenes with her symmetrical chiseled features and troubled blue eyes. Due to her careless handling of a .22 caliber snubnose revolver, she's got mild-mannered Detective Edward Ahn (John Cho) on her tail. He does mean things like buy her coffee she didn't order, and ask her which Portland's she's from, Oregon or Maine? She has no trouble evading Ahn and two uniformed cops prowling her apartment hallway as she turns amateur sleuth to clear her name.
When Jill takes on the mantle of The Wrong Man, as it were, she assumes a subject position made sacred by Hitchcock and countless other Noir writers and directors with less name recognition. Unlike previous anti-heroes and heroines, she doesn't meet much resistance. No criminal underworld rises up out of the gutter to sully her innocence. Nobody slips her a mickey, tries to run her off the road, or beats her senseless in a back alley. There are no back alleys in this film, only car seats, karaoke bars, couches, and coffee shop counters. This is Noir Lite.
Writer, director, and editor Aaron Katz does a lot with a little, establishing psychological suspense with minimal means, keeping us interested through a skillful use of suggestion. Cinematography by Andrew Reed put me in an L.A. trance and lulled me into uncritical receptivity. Skittering percussion by composer Keegan De Witt was deployed for maximum heartbeat acceleration. No aesthetic pleasures, however, could mask the wimpiness of the denouement's reliance on an old Agatha Christie trick, delivered to the disappointed viewer with zero emotional payoff. Lesbian climaxes tend to be far more exciting, if memory serves.