Brothers of the Head

If there is a target audience for Brothers of the Head, a new film about fictional British conjoined twin punk/rock stars Tom and Barry Howe, I am it. If you knew me, you would, upon hearing about this film for the first time, immediately send me an email called "Have you heard about this?"—all CAPS. In fact, if there is a person in the world more likely to have gone to see this film, I'd wager he or she has a sibling attached to head or hip.

Apart from being an Anglophile who harbors a particular fondness for seventies rock and punk, I am the author of a novel, Love Will Tear Us Apart (Pocket/Downtown Press), about a pair of conjoined twin pop stars. In it, sexy seventeen-year-olds Flora and Fauna Sparks—performers in the vein of Britney Spears—have risen to great heights of fame. Their story is told by cynical celebrity journalist Sloan Madden, who has been asked to pen the twins' biography. It's darkly comic, tragic, and not yet a bestseller. So the only thing more certain than the fact that I would go to see Brothers of the Head was the fact that I would love it or hate it. I'll admit I am not above professional jealousy; I wanted it to suck almost as badly as I wanted it to succeed. So in a way there was no way I was going to be disappointed. I was, however, surprised—by how quickly I went from potential naysayer to fanatical cheerleader. Riveting and hypnotic, Brothers of the Headis everything I hoped it would be and more. It's like a creepy, sexy, dream you had and can't quite shake. One that makes you try to go back to sleep straight away, in the hopes that it will pick up right where it left off. One that you can't quite explain to anyone come morning.

Directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe (best known for their documentary Lost in La Mancha) and based on the book by Brian Aldiss (who has, in fact, said that the story came to him in a dream), Brothers of the Head documents Tom and Barry's rise and fall. Joined by a thick band of flesh at the chest—and played with equal measures of testosterone and nuance by newcomer identical twin actors Harry and Luke Treadaway—they are sold by their father to an entertainment entrepreneur and locked away in an English country manor that becomes their private School of Rock. Reluctant pupils at first, the twins eventually warm to the project; Tom's guitar becomes as constant a presence as his brother; Barry hones snarling vocals that invigorate the songs being penned for them. Launched onto the national stage with their band, the Bang Bang, the twins provoke mania among the hip young set just as they begin to sink into a mania of their own. They're drinking heavily and taking drugs. They're hearing voices—or, at least, one: that of a ghostly third, malign twin. They're scrawling strange lyrics on the walls. There's a girl.

To say that Brothers of the Head is the best conjoined-twin movie ever made isn't saying much. The cult classic status of Freaks, which features Daisy and Violet Hilton (joined at the tailbone), stems as much from its bumper cast of real life freaks as it does from the laughable script. Chained for Life, a starring vehicle for the Hiltons, reveals Daisy and Violet to be wooden actresses and the hollow plot's a good match for them. Twin Falls Idaho suffered under the weight of heavy-handed symbolism (shots of two dollar bills and the like), and the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold character dragged things down to the level of cliché. Even when played for laughs, conjoined twins prove tricky: the funniest part of the Farrelly brothers' Stuck on You, featuring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear strapped together, was the casting.