A strange fake documentary about actual conjoined twins

Brothers of the Head is an unnerving mock-documentary about conjoined twins briefly famous as the '70s punk-rock duo The Bang Bang.

In tone, it is less like This Is Spinal Tap than like Dead Ringers, that urban gothic about twins unsure of where one ends and the other begins.

Brothers' source material is a novel by Brian Aldiss, also author of the biology-and-identity thriller on which A.I: Artificial Intelligence is based.

Directed by Keith Fulton and Lou Pepe, makers of the superlative, stranger-than-fiction doc Lost in La Mancha, Brothers deconstructs a symbiotic relationship and those who would profit from its freakishness.

Although Brothers bills itself as a documentary and uses talking heads, "found" footage and "archival film" to tell its strange, sad story, everything in it is staged. Thus, this meditation on how difficult it is for a twin to develop and maintain his individual identity is also about how difficult it is for the viewer to distinguish between truth and "truthiness." (Credit Anthony Dod Mantle for his skill in re-creating the look of '70s cinema verité, '70s film melodrama, and modern-day talking heads.)

Tom and Barry Howe (played by the Treadaway twins, Harry and Luke, who are not conjoined) are joined figuratively at the hip and literally by a bridge of flesh just above it. They share neural and circulatory systems. Tom was born with his left arm around Barry's shoulder and Barry with his right around Tom's waist. They look like they're in a perpetual three-legged race.

At 18 the lean and androgynous twins from England's Norfolk coast are sold by their father to a London promoter who wants them for a novelty rock act. Fulton and Pepe open their "documentary" with filmed sequences from an aborted Ken Russell biopic, Two Way Romeo, about the hardscrabble parent who sells his innocents to a rich man. It may remind movie geeks of a similar scene from Citizen Kane.

Shortly after the sequence from the "lost" Russell film, we see the real Russell, resembling Jabba the Hut in love beads. He holds forth on how he sees the story of the Howe twins as a parable of the exploitation of innocence. Other witnesses include the female biographer who falls for Tom and the American documentarian who saw the weaving and unraveling of the one-hit wonders. (Their duets might be described as Sid Vicious meets Patti Smith.)

By jumping back and forward in time and leapfrogging among witnesses, Fulton and Pepe interrupt their story's flow. This has the effect of distancing the audience from characters with whom we're to identify.

Finally, Brothers is a provocative but oddly unsatisfying film experiment. The characters don't stay with you. The mood does.

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/carrierickey.

Brothers of the Head ** 1/2 (out of four stars)

Produced by Simon Channing-Williams and Gail Egan, directed by Keith Fulton and Lou Pepe, written by Tony Grisoni from the novel by Brian Aldiss, photography by Anthony Dod Mantle, music by Clive Langer, distributed by IFC Films.

Running time: 1 hour, 30 mins.

Tom Howe. . . Harry Treadaway

Barry Howe. . . Luke Treadaway

Eddie Pasqua. . . Tom Bower

Laura. . . Tania Emery

Ken Russell . . . Himself

Parent's guide: R

Playing at: Ritz at the Bourse, Ritz Sixteen/NJ