Directed By Agnieszka Smoczynska

Starring – Letitia Wright, Tamara Lawrance, Michael Smiley

The Plot – Based on the lives of June (Wright) and Jennifer Gibbons (Lawrance), real-life identical twins who grew up in Wales, part of the only Black family in a small town. The two became known as “the silent twins” because of their refusal to communicate with anyone other than each other. They developed their own language and became catatonic when separated. The story takes place after a spree of vandalism inspired by an American boy, they both idolize, when the girls, now teenagers, are sentenced to Broadmoor, an infamous psychiatric hospital, where they face the choice to separate and survive or die together.

Rated R for drug use, some sexual content, nudity, adult language and disturbing material.

THE SILENT TWINS – Official Trailer [HD] – Only in Theaters September 16 – YouTube

POSITIVES

Even though I’ve never heard of Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska, nor seen any of her films, I’m confident that hers will be a name that I will never forget for the remainder of my film writing tenure. I say that because even an hour after seeing “The Silent Twins”, I’m left with this unshakeable mood from the thickness of her tonal plausibility that at times frames this like a psychological horror film, while others a scintillating drama through the eyes of twins whom the longer they live together, the further they grow apart. This depicts the predicament of twins as this living, breathing nightmare that not only permeates simultaneously with the backdrop of a 70’s and 80’s Wales setting casting a gloomy resonance over the presentation, but also in the depiction for how society views these girls, with an air of unsettling threat to the connections that various outsiders are unable to tap coherently into. It’s a fascinating story, and one that wholeheartedly is deserving of the big screen treatment, especially in the benefits of the production decisions, which often offer an insightful commentary into the thoughts of the titular twins in ways the audible dialogue simply never affords them. Cinematographer Jakub Kijowski transfixes us with a bold use of color, seducing us with warm, glowing luminescence during scenes of comfort and communication for the twins, balancing the cold and damply downtrodden associated with the alienating emphasis of their daily routines. This is made all the more transcendent and introspective with the duo of composers Marcin Macuk and Zuzanna Wronska’s creative musical score, which not only reflects the atmospheric mood of every scene they accommodate, but also features vocals from the girls who are reading lines of the real-life diaries of their counter figures. The girls themselves are performed by Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrence, in their later years, who each put on a duo of tour de force performances that zero in on the unique dynamic between them that evolves with what seems like each passing scene. The script does a tremendous job of articulating their unshakeable connection, at times feeling telekinetic, but leaving much of the heavy lifting to their tremendous depth as actresses, which enhance the subtle differences of their respective characters. Wright injects an air of tenderness and ambition to June that drives many of the film’s adventurous directions, and Lawrance captivates soundly with a boiling rage and zealous tenacity that often conveys an internal longing in her connective facial registries, proving that there’s plenty of stage between these youthful actresses to continuously steal the show. Beyond the elderly duo, the work of their youthful counterparts in Leah Mondesir-Simmonds and Eva-Arianna Baxter are equally hypnotic, with a depth in personality that effectively triggers in facial acting despite little to no dialogue distributed for their causes, and a visual likeness that articulated them as twins when their elderly counterparts were anything but.

NEGATIVES

While the film is littered with potential at nearly every avenue, it’s plagued by a shallow script with its own abundance of contradictive hinderances that robs it of ambition. This leads to a bit of a disappointing exploration throughout the 108-minute run time, both in the surface level dissection of the film’s many talking points with the medical field that often failed them, but also in the virtually non-existent surrounding family members, who disappear after a prominent opening act that counterpunched with their own internal disappointments. This makes the film feel like a perfect diving-in companion for anyone unfamiliar with the real-life story of the Gibbons sisters, but not necessarily one that justifies its cause with the audiences already experienced in the bullet points of their typical Wikipedia biography. I can understand this is difficult with a script constructed entirely of past literary companion pieces and scarce journal entries, but it doesn’t necessarily make for a compelling sit all the same, leaving us like the many people who came into contact with them: plagued by ambiguity for never exploring them at eye level. In addition to this, the pacing is frequently arduous, especially during a third act that flounders when it should be firing. During this aspect, repetition starts to set in, and when combined with an uneven depiction that heavily favors June in this particular section, we’re left with a series of leaps in logic and abrupt personality shifts for Jennifer that are echoed further with an on-screen text that lingers on the uncertainty of her mysterious death. Finally, while I initially raved about much of the production that accommodated the experience, the unnecessary usage of Claymation visuals during sequences of the girls narrating their literary work was a bit distracting to say the least. Part of the problem is certainly that the animation itself is presented to be a bit humorous and even cutesy, which contradicts the sentiment in much of their commentary, but for my money the bigger problem is in the boisterous blanketing of the actions of the clay-created characters themselves. It takes us away from the girls during the key moments when clarity could convey a deeper sense of relatability towards them, and in the case of the artistic direction does master beauty, but it’s never beauty that is needed to render the most vulnerable moments in the lives of these frightened protagonists.

OVERALL
“The Silent Twins” is a poignant starting point for both the story of the Gibbons’ girls and Smoczynska’s work alike, but not necessarily one that makes the most of the rare opportunity to elicit something meaningful to twin diagnosis and the compelling allure to cinematic drama. It’s a strangely transfixing and unconventional biopic, but one that is bogged down almost entirely by a script that cautiously and continuously undercuts its potential, leaving it evocative, but superficial none the less.

My Grade: 6/10 or C-