Compassion Dominates the Offbeat ‘Twin Falls’ Tale

At the beginning of the sensitive and decidedly offbeat love story “Twin Falls Idaho,” a beautiful young call girl, Penny (Michele Hicks), enters a Victorian-era skid row hotel--it looks to be the 103-year-old Barclay at 4th and Main in downtown L.A.--in an unnamed city. She knocks on a door at the end of a hall and announces as she goes in, “This place is full of freaks!,” to a thin, nice-looking young man, Francis Falls (Michael Polish) as he emerges from the bathroom.

She comments on how normal he looks but swiftly realizes that she’s made an embarrassing faux pas, for Francis turns out to be conjoined to his identical twin Blake (Mark Polish).

The twins, in town on a special mission, are celebrating their 25th birthday, complete with chocolate cake and candles, and Francis intends that Penny be his present to Blake. Penny is, of course, taken aback at what she has encountered; still, she is no hardened hooker but a kind, intelligent young woman struggling to get her life together and not succeeding very well. Perhaps the sweet, shy personalities of the Falls brothers bring out the maternal in her, perhaps she identifies with them as outsiders. In any event, she responds to them as human beings and not as monsters.

Suddenly, Francis is hit with intestinal flu, deflecting any sexual moment of truth and allowing for a friendship between Penny and the brothers to develop after she insists on sending for one of her johns named Miles (Patrick Bauchau), a middle-aged doctor, to treat Francis. Mutual attraction develops between Penny and Blake, who says wistfully, as Francis sleeps, “Maybe I’ll call you when I’m single.”

That could actually happen sooner rather than later, for Francis has a serious heart condition and believes, accurately or otherwise, that it’s blood pumped from Blake’s heart that keeps him alive. But should Francis start dying, Blake himself might not be able to undergo separation if it should turn out that their systems are hopelessly intertwined. (Francis has the left arm, Blake the right; Francis has two good legs, but Blake’s left leg is severely stunted.)

As identical twins, the Polish brothers--Michael directed and he and Mark co-wrote the script--have been fascinated since grade school with the legend of Chang and Eng Bunker, the “Siamese” twins, who actually were born in Siam and became circus sideshow attractions in 19th century America, marrying sisters and fathering 22 children. In the Bunkers’ literal bond--a thick band of tissue that in their case probably could have easily been severed today--the Polish brothers perceived the psychic bond that often exists between identical twins. What the Polish twins explore in their film in such illuminating fashion is the paradox that conjoined twins represent: the eternally alternating impulse for dependence and independence within human relationships.

Miles suggests to Penny that she finds the brothers’ dependency upon each other for survival threatening; Blake yearns to be free as the physically weaker Francis seems not to, yet he concludes that he and Francis never really wanted to be separated for any other reason than to avoid being gawked at as freaks. You get the feeling that Penny and the Falls twins just might have it in them to work out something romantically between them, but you can’t actually guess where the film is ultimately taking us.

In their first feature, Mark, a full-time actor, and Michael, a filmmaker who studied at Cal Arts, eschew the bizarre and sensational entirely and go instead for a sensitive, poignant tone that is underlined by Stuart Matthewman’s gentle score. The Polish brothers give us a respite from the dark humor that has become de rigueur these days and, in doing so, have created a graceful mood piece that is infinitely moving. “Twin Falls Idaho” takes its title not from the city of that name but from the brothers’ relationship and name; Idaho is the name of the street where their hotel is.

The brothers are as persuasive behind the camera as in front of it, and Michael’s careful direction of Hicks yields from her a most promising debut performance. Lesley Ann Warren playing a key figure in the twins’ lives, Jon Gries as Penny’s crass pimp who sees the Falls brothers as a million-dollar property ripe for exploitation, Garrett Morris as an ebullient preacher and William Katt as a conscientious medico are all on target.

Warren Alan Young’s production design and color scheme subtly suggest that the twins and their mother have, in a sense, been stuck in a kind of limbo since their birth. Photographed by M. David Mullen to give the film considerable scope and elegance, “Twin Falls Idaho” is a lot closer to Tod Browning’s compassionate classic “Freaks” (1932) than to Brian De Palma’s memorably Grand Guignol-ish “Sisters” (1973) with Margot Kidder, and, given its story, is all the better for it. Now, if we could just see the late Violet and Daisy Hilton, real-life conjoined twins, in their rarely seen 1940s low-budget “Chained for Life.” . . .

* MPAA rating: R, for language. Times guidelines: mature themes.

‘Twin Falls Idaho’

Mark Polish: Blake Falls

Michael Polish: Francis Falls

Michele Hicks: Penny

Lesley Ann Warren: Francine

A Sony Pictures Classics release. Director/co-writer Michael Polish. Producers Marshall Persinger, Rena Ronson, Steven J. Wolfe. Executive producer Joyce Schweikert. Co-writer Mark Polish. Cinematographer M. David Mullen. Editor Leo Trombetta. Music Stuart Matthewman. Costumes Bic Owen. Production designer Warren Alan Young. Art director Grace Li. Set decorator Alysa D. Allen. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

At selected theaters.