Brothers of the Head (review)

If you loved 24 Hour Party People, then you’ll, well, like this mockumentary (in that it’s fake, not that it mocks) about 1970s Siamese-twin rock dudes, starring real twins (though not conjoined ones) Harry and Luke Treadaway. They bring a strangely delicate weirdness to the Howe brothers -- Barry, the troublemaker (Luke), and Tom, the sweetie (Harry) -- who aspire to greatness but mostly get exploited, as you might expect, though the telling of their tale is oddly lacking in some of the drama it needs to be fully satisfying. Still, the guys who brought us the fascinating real documentary Lost in La Mancha (Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe) spin an intriuguing strangeness from a short story by SF writer Brian Aldiss (A.I. Artificial Intelligence), incorporating snippets of the beautifully surrealistic “unfinished film,” Two Way Romeo, by Ken Russell about the lads (hint: it’s all pure invention, though Russell himself is a sport and appears to “discuss” the “film”), and a slightly creepy kind of enchantment from the extrapolation of the freak show of rock ‘n’ roll to a, you know, actually freak show. Rock on, but be prepared to be left just a bit frustrated by the near-greatness this perplexing film almost achieves.

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