Agnieszka Smoczyńska, the director of The Silent Twins, wants to frustrate you. Her opening credits are playful, with two young actors giggling as they read the names of cast members aloud. The background imagery is a kind of cute/ugly stop-motion animation (you can sense the Michel Gondry influence). But then the playful music and imagery evaporates, and you see the girls as they are to outsiders. They are sullen and silent, with their heads bowed to an awkward degree. This film does not exactly explore why these girls would act this way, and instead follows the terrible consequences of their codependent rebellion. It is affecting because Smoczyńska finds creative way to depict their total isolation, and the two lead performances evoke young women who might have thrived in less hostile, more empathetic environment.
In the early ‘60s, the Gibbons family relocated from Barbados to Wales. Most of the family do their best to assimilate, but June (Letitia Wright) and her twin sister Jennifer (Tamara Lawrance) go in the complete opposite direction. They spent almost all their time in their room, talking only to each other. Parts of their behavior are normal: they fixate on boys, listen to the radio and develop in-jokes among each other. Outside that room – and outside the frequent animated sequences that suggest the depths of their imaginations – they make no attempt to communicate, seemingly without caring how it might affect their family or education. Adults frown and attempt to socialize them, with almost zero results. The only time there is any hint of emotion of intelligence is when the tension between them boils over, then they erupt in violence.
Andrea Seigel, who adapted her script from a book by journalist Marjorie Wallace, bracingly mixes fantasy and realism. June and Jennifer were not just shut-ins, but creative people who wrote stories and made all kinds of art. By juxtaposing their inner life with their outward nature, we alternate between pity and annoyance. It is through Wright and Lawrance’s performances that the film never tilts too hard in one direction. We start to understand where they are coming from through little flourishes of body languages, and the private conversations they share. There is a sense that June and Jennifer are like this because their own relation is so toxic, so all-consuming, that one twin would see any kind of normal behavior as a betrayal. Since much of the film involves them not speaking, the performances necessarily suggest a great deal without showing much.
When the twins eventually interact with others, it is partially because they cannot ignore their hormones. There is an intriguing sequence where the twins obsess over boys their age, both American, who introduce them to drinking and drugs. Smoczyńska tantalizes subtext, never quite commenting on it. Do June and Jennifer like these boys in particular because, as Americans, they’re also outsiders? Or are they just cute and rebellious in a way that’s appealing to lots of teenage girls? There are no easy answers, and these scenes are emblematic of a much larger oversight: The Silent Twins has little interest in exploring race. The Gibbons family are the only Black characters in the film, yet the filmmakers have a marked disinterest in considering this difference as part of their alienation. None of the outside characters seem to notice their race, either, suggesting the film has a “I don’t see race” viewpoint that does it zero favors.
In spite of his unexplored angle, The Silent Twins is captivating because Smoczyńska turns the screws on its lead characters. After years of self-imposed isolation, the twins find they are miserable because their isolation is state-sanctioned, and they spend most of their time separated (there is a monkey’s paw kind of irony here that is suggested, though never articulated). There is a familiar drama to these scenes, a kind of horror to the inhuman psychiatric institution, which is why the final scenes come as a kind of surprise. The state finally releases June and Jennifer, and although the film is a true story, it is best to keep what happens next a surprise, since these scenes force us to reconsider everything that they went through.
Would June and Jennifer have been healthier apart? Under more humane or psychologically astute conditions, would the twins have thrived? After the wringer the film puts its characters through – and the audience by extension – we are left with one complex feeling: it is a wonder June and Jennifer found meaning, or fleeting moments of happiness, at all.
Photo courtesy of Focus Features
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