Tough, super-intelligent, dragon lady Kimmy runs her father’s business with a ruthlessness that has propelled the Go Dong Hae corporation to the top. Her only soft spot is for employee Johnson who has to endure her constant attention and suggestive advances with lines like “rejection is the greatest aphrodisiac.” The irritant in Kimmy’s life is her twin sister Dora who shares her curvaceous physique but little else. Although twins, Dora is the diametric opposite - a semi-retarded, caring, gentle and considerate soul who neglects her family business duties and worse of all for Kimmy, she attracts and reciprocates the Johnson’s amorous attentions.
The girls’ father fills in the narrative of their backstory. Kimmy was born first, but unknown to the parents, Dora was still in the womb, only to emerge a week later while her mother was in the toilet. As a result, Dora hit her head on the toilet bowl which affected her brain and her mother died giving birth to her. The twins were very close as young girls but Kimmy suffered a serious typhoid fever which changed her into a brilliant but steely and aggressive woman who speaks mainly English in contrast to Dora’s mostly Filipino.
When Father Go Dong Hae draws up a will that leaves most of his fortune to Dora (on the basis that Kimmy can look after herself), devious attorney Harris tells Kimmy that he can help change things in her favour. His plan leads to the mistaken kidnapping of Kimmy, Dora’s impersonation of her sister for the good of the corporation, and a climax that involves the twins’ fighting it out in front of a confused SWAT team that cannot tell Kimmy from Dora.
This first film from newly-formed independent production company Spring Films has nevertheless a (mostly Star Cinema) sterling mainstream industry pedigree - Joyce Bernal, one of the Philippines’ most successful directors; Piolo Pascual, an A-list star as a producer; and Chris Martinez who has written box office hits for Chito Roño (Caregiver, Sukob) and Jeffrey Jeturian (Bridal Shower) as well as being a filmmaker in his own right (100). In addition, actors Eugene Domingo and Dingdong Dantes have worked in television and movies with Bernal. It is a team that has enabled an integrated and precise work in the challenging sub-genre of the comedy of confusion.
Joyce Bernal orchestrates the chaos with an evident pleasure in the mischief of garbled messages, mistaken identities, scrambled film conventions (Kimmy being chased by hitmen is a classic of subversion), that advances her to the top of the comedy class together with Frank Tashlin and Michael Hui, distinguished further by Bernal’s woman protagonist (as opposed to the classic male comic).
It’s clear that Kimmy and Dora are the two sides of Bernal’s idealich and indeed the twins fit quite nicely into Freud’s four part definition of narcissism which are all represented in the film’s narrative, “(a) what he himself is (i.e. himself), (b) what he himself was, (c) what he himself would like to be, (d) someone who was once part of himself.”
Kimmy and Dora are to 21st century comedy, what Buddy Love and Julius Kelp were to the 20th century, and Joyce Bernal again proves that she is the finest comedy director working in Asia today.
Roger Garcia