I saw "Les jumeaux oubliés", which stands for "The Forgotten Twins" in French, exactly one year ago and I am at the same time surprised and delighted by the very high user rating (8.9/10) exceptional for a TV-movie. There are several reasons for this.In order to illustrate my point of view, it would be useful to say something about the plot, without spoiling it: the story evolves around two boys, Adrien, a well-educated boy raised in a well-off family, and Mathieu, a "DDAS" child (The"DDAS" is a state institution in France taking care of and upbringing orphans)living more or less on the street and committing small thefts with his mates, both of them played by Clément Sibony,who gives here in my opinion his best performance so far.One day, Mathieu, along with his mates, is robbing drivers caught in the traffic and after wards opens a wallet he has just stolen. I turns out that it is Adrien's mother's wallet and to his greatest amazement, he discovers in it the picture of his twin brother, whom he will begin to seek and with whom he will share many experiences. I will stop the plot summary at this point because I would not like to spoil it for those who would like to see it and explain where the strength of the movie lies: the theme of the twins is used here in a "non-cliché", very unusual way: the twins do not behave like twin brothers at all, they retain their different personalities, but discover that they have many things in common: it is above all the story of a great friendship arising between two boys of very different social backgrounds and with a very different experience in life. This is, in my opinion, the major universal message of this film, that is to say whatever our social class and experience of life may be, we often have much more things in common with other people than we might think- the fact that the two boys are twins is the mere physical illustration of this fact- and that these barriers can be crossed. I would finally like to add that it is really a shame that such good TV-movies often never become available to a larger audience at the theaters, a few known exceptions being Steven Spielberg's "Duel" and the British "Beautiful Thing". "Les jumeaux oubliés", in my opinion, definitely deserves the same fate.
