Twin sisters

I read the book to this film about 6 years ago, back when I was in high school and was so impressed by it that I bought the book for my bookcase three years ago or something. I haven't read the book since and I'm not some kind of purist, heck I don't even remember the specifics of the book. At best that makes me as biased as someone who didn't read the book at all...or at worst it means that I'm not a 'purist'.

Translating a book into film, the visible medium, there are so many stages at which it can go wrong. Luckily it didn't with this one. The casting is perfect. I especially liked how Lotte and Anna spoke believably broken German and Dutch. Not as it sometimes happens in American productions, when they for instance speak Dutch and say it is German. This was very well done indeed and added to the films worth. What touches me most about De Tweeling though is the fact at heart, that you get shaped partly by your environment. It is worked out very well in this film and my favorite part is that the film distances itself (as does the book) from pointing out one of the two sisters as 'the bad guy'. The film just shows the horror, the desperation and the pain on the common man from both sides; the aggressor and the wrongfully invaded. It is a truly great theme and it is one of the few films I guess in which you actually get to feel sympathy for the Germans (or at least some of them). Maybe that is understandable. Maybe it is logic that most films portray the Germans as gruesome and despicable as quite a lot of them maybe were. But every once in a while a film comes along that shows us that they are human too, that they suffered losses; that German lives lost shatter German families as they shatter American, Dutch, Polish, Jewish, English and so on. This is one of those films. It strays from the cliché, which is what I liked about it as I did like Stalingrad (1993) and Die Brücke (1959).

8 out of 10

I read the book, De Tweeling by Tessa de Loo, and I must say that the movie most certainly lived up to the high quality of the book, in some ways even surpassed it.

The movie is about two little girls, obviously twins, who tragically get separated. One to work on a farm, the other to live with rich relatives in The Netherlands to recover from her tbc. The movie then jumps to present where to two elderly sisters meet again in a spa. However, their meeting is far from loving and it becomes clear that some scar from the past obstructs the reunion of these two sisters.

The movie then brilliantly uses flashbacks to reveal the scar that has separated the two for life, and it mostly comes down to the second world war, both living and experiences it in a different way and place.

Little prepares Lotte and Anna, twin sisters living happily with their beloved father, for what life had in store for them. After the girls' father dies, they are left alone at the mercy of relatives who separate them in an act of sheer cruelty. Lotte and Anna go through a lot in life, not knowing, at times, about one another, and spend most of their lives apart.

Lotte fares better of the two sisters. She was a frail girl growing up and her relatives dote on her since they regard her as an invalid. Lotte writes to Anna letters during the first years of being apart, but those letters are never sent. Anna, on the other hand, is made a slave, practically, as she is made to help in the family farm and is never given the opportunity to attend school until the kind priest discovers how she has been severely beaten.

The other encounter of the sisters occur too late in life. Lotte, who when first visits Anna at the place where she is employed as a maid, by a wealthy Nazi sympathizer, is appalled by the way Anna has turned out to be an anti Semite. This puts a barrier between them not to be broken until both are too old and too stubborn to recognize how wrong they both have been about the past. Their last reunion is a bitter experience, especially for Anna, who is in poor health.

This excellent Dutch film directed by Ben Sombogaart, is based on a novel by Tessa DeLoo, which was published in this country as "Twins", gets a magnificent treatment in a lavish production that covers several decades. The action is set in Holland and in Germany.

The basic reason for watching the film is the great acting the director got from Thekla Reutins and Nadja Uhl, who are seen as the young Lotte and Anna. Both these young actresses are perfect as the twins in their youth. Ellen Vogel and Gudrum Okras, on the other hand, are also effective as the older sisters have a final confrontation at a spa where both have gone for cures.

The film shows a talented director, Ben Bombogaart, doing an excellent job in this richly layered tale of sisterly love and missed opportunities.

When their parents die, both twin sisters Lotte and Anna are seperated by their family. One of them is raised by a wealthy Dutch family and the other one by a German farmer family. They are not allowed to see or even write each other. Because they live in two different worlds they become two different women. The dutch girl is going to marry a Jew, while the German one falls in love with a SS-soldier. When they finally contact each other it turns out that they have grown apart too far, and a definite break seems inevitable. Will it ever be possible to become reconciled with each other?

Twin sisters is a beautiful movie that fully deservs the oscar nomination. It's not really another WWII movie as much people think, but more a touching story behind the actual events of the war.

De tweeling is the best dutch film up until this point. It was surprisingly well made for a dutch production. With more votes it would become a top 250 movie and I think it deserves to be. A few years ago I almost cried because of the Green Mile. This movie almost brought to tears too. It takes very much for my cold hart to be touched. Not only was I touched by the story but also the quality of this production.

Unfortunately the government wants to stop funding the dutch movieindustry. That'll be the end great dutch movies like de tweeling.