The Silent Twins

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.

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 am an identical twin. Understanding them was easy. I felt that bond as a child. The language they created, the words they conveyed to one another without speaking, the worlds they lived in, and the metaphorical dance they endlessly performed was something my twin and I had. The difference was that we grew out of that special closeness, the bubble that we inhabited eventually popped. The film takes us on a similar journey, flawlessly, as if the twins produced it themselves. The direction, script, acting, costumes, art direction, score, and cinematography all masterfully come together to recreate their perfectly delicate and complicated twin-dom. This is a brilliant film, a delicious character study that will touch you deeply... if you let it.

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.

This is a film inspired by true events and is not a documentary to many people's dismay. Most people have the wrong expectations about the style of this film and give it a bad review. I accepted the filmmakers choice to use non-twins for this film. Telling a story like this with this type of artistic creativity could be confusing for people that can't tell twins apart. What this film does bring to the viewer is highlights of some of the bigger moments in the twins lives while occasionally using some art and claymation to emphasize parts of the story being told, and I accepted the use of claymation as a dramatic effect that could resemble the imaginations of the twins, and the inspiration for the music and scoring was quite acceptable and appropriately sets the tone for your emotions. I did think the acting was very good, and when they were silent they easily were able to covey the right expressions to keep me engaged and aware of each twin's reactions and emotions.