Las gemelas que no hablaban

Greetings again from the darkness. Twins often have their own language or way of communicating. However, sisters June and Jennifer Gibbons of Wales took this to a new level, creating a mysterious dark connection that no one else every understood. Andrea Siegel has adapted the screenplay from Marjorie Wallace's book, and Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska (THE LURE 2015) delivers the style and creep factor, while missing out on answering the questions raised with the story.

The young sisters are seen giving a fake radio broadcast, and we get a glimpse of their awkward behavior during childhood ... behavior that left their parents and siblings feeling helpless. Letitia Wright (BLACK PANTHER, 2018) and Tamara Lawrance (KINDRED, 2020) take over as teenage June and Jennifer, respectively. While the young ones are well cast, it's the work of Ms. Wright and Ms. Lawrance that keep this one watchable despite the meandering. The awkward behavior of adolescents evolves into bizarre behavior of teens, and ultimately criminal behavior and some type of mental illness.

Pure elation of a new typewriter is all too quickly erased by irritation and anger that leads to fighting, or worse. Director Smoczynska does well to use stop motion animation periodically in helping to explain what's happening with the two girls. Child psychologists have no luck breaking through and the sisters are ultimately separated and locked away at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital by age 19. By this time, it's difficult not to view them as psychopaths.

It's interesting to watch as these two survive on the fringes of society in near mental isolation, and use writing as a creative outlet to unleash their inner thoughts. We never really know if we should have empathy for the girls, and that becomes even more difficult given their later behavior. Journalist Marjorie Wallace (played here by Jodhi May) documented her interactions with the sisters, but we can't help but wonder if this story is better told in documentary form - despite the strong work from Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance.

Opens in theaters on September 16, 2022.

The movie is captivating as an entertainment, but a quick google search informed me it bears little on reality, despite the filmmaker's claim it's based entirely on facts; and the facts call for anything but entertainment. The problem is that she avoids the horrific story of the sisters, making a movie out of their fantasies stemming from post-traumatic psychosis. During a talk she said she wanted to dispel the general narrative of the "evil twins" and tell the story of artists. Indeed they're incredibly perceptive if what is depicted is true: the film begins with psychological insights by the girls of which most adults would be incapable, and which I found hard to believe.

The director abruptly ended the talk on the note that the surviving sister is still "creative", having republished her book and written a short story. I didn't get a chance to ask whether she's made any real psychological progress. The movie depicts her looking happy while taking ballet lessons.

There are certainly interesting themes like the bond between the sisters and how one mysteriously died out of a wish to free her twin sister - again, I only became aware of that during the talk. The film itself is diluted by pop songs and such.

The story calls for a director like Haneke.

This is a film that deserves the screen time however it leaves you with too many questions if you aren't already familiar with the real life tradgedy that this was. The identical twin sisters had a heavy accent from there culture that they were shunned and made out to be a circus act in a predominantly white school. They basically could not fit in and in the middle and end so many people were able to study, dissect, and write books based on them to profit off the fact that if they had just been treated with an ounce of dignity for speech classes as children their entire lives would have been different.

First the good, the acting is great, I think everyone gives strong performances, no weak links here, also the cinematography is great, some really nice shots and coloring, kudos to the technical team, unfortunately what good is all of this if the story isn't compelling enough, i've seen short films where the acting is less than stellar but great plots that pull you in and make up for weak acting, the problem is these sisters just aren't that interesting, simple as that, or maybe they are, but the writing oddly made this film one dimensional and linear with its plot. We fail to connect with the characters ultimately, and the film just plods along. Honestly the Wikipedia entry is more interesting.

I went into this movie thinking it would be a story of triumph and redemption after a hard isolated life, and it was in a way... This story is much darker than I'd anticipated. These two girls had clear struggles and no one seemed to be able to help them. They lived in their own world of beautiful fantasy, while the world around them was cold and at many times disturbing. I almost stopped watching because I had not been ready to feel the strange unsettling nature of this film, but I'm very glad I didn't.

This story will stay with me for a good while.

Hard to watch at times. Fascinating. Heartbreaking. True.