Based on the true story of two selectively mute British sisters who spent much of their childhoods imprisoned within an impenetrable private universe, followed by a long spell in a real prison, The Silent Twins is a haunting, melancholy poem of a film. It marks the English-language debut of Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska, whose bizarre coming-of-age mermaid musical The Lure (2015) made a respectable festival splash. Premiering in the Un Certain Regard sidebar in Cannes, this Poland-UK co-production gets a little lost in translation at times, with some tonal glitches and stilted dialogue. But it still works as an enticingly strange twisted-sister story, while a strong cast led by Black Panther co-star Laetitia Wright should swell its potential audience. Focus Features will handle theatrical release later this year.
The Silent Twins is adapted from a 1986 book of the same name by campaigning journalist Marjorie Wallace, which gave the sisters a high profile in Britain, inspiring not just this film but also previous TV dramas, a stage play and two operas. Wallace later founded the mental health charity SANE. The first act of the story mostly takes place in Haverfordwest, a small town in southwest Wales, in the 1960s and 1970s. The daughters of Caribbean immigrants, June and Jennifer Gibbons (winningly played as children by Leah Mondesir-Simmonds and Eva-Arianna Baxter) are the only black students in a very white school, making them obvious targets for racist bullying – a crucial psychological factor that Smoczynska, oddly, barely addresses at all.
Withdrawing into themselves, the girls stop speaking to anybody besides each other, both at home and school, driving their empathetic teacher (Michael Smiley) to despair. But though they are stubbornly silent with everyone else, the teenage June (Wright) and Jennifer (Tamara Lawrence) build a richly expressive inner world inside their shared bedroom that involves speaking in their own twee, lisping, private language. Besides hosting an imaginary radio show, they write poems and songs and lurid horror-romance novels which they eventually pay to have published. They also stage macabre dramas with toys and dolls, which Smoczynska recreates in stop-motion sequences that have some of the nightmarish quality of Tim Burton’s animations. This hand-made, artisan aesthetic recurs throughout the film, including the opening credits.
Adolescence wreaks havoc on the twins, who progress from sex, drink and drugs to petty theft, criminal damage and arson. In the subsequent court case, their muteness counts against them and they are sent away for an indefinite spell to Broadmoor, a secure mental health hospital notorious for housing serial killers and violent criminals. Dosed up on anti-psychotic drugs, the pair end up being detained for 11 years while family and friends campaign for their release, amplified by sympathetic articles by Wallace (Jodhi May). Finally the sisters are allowed home to Wales, but a mysterious tragedy strikes just as freedom looms.
Working from an adapted screenplay by US novelist Andrea Seigel, The Silent Twins does not resolve the unanswered questions behind the pair’s extreme behaviour, nor the spooky final twist that split them apart. Perhaps because she is not working in her native language, Smoczynska hits a few clunky notes here, but Wright and Lawrance bring commitment and energy to characters that could well have been sociopaths. This is ultimately a compassionate, beguiling study of an intensely strange sisterly bond, with an uncanny ambience that recalls Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994) or Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (1999) in places.
Marcin Macuk and Zuzanna Wro?ska work up some of June and Jennifer’s lyrics into musical numbers that pepper the soundtrack, dreamy folk-pop ballads with a charmingly naive feel. Keen-eyed Brits will spot that the snowy concrete locations actually look more like Poland than Wales, because they are, but this dislocated otherness arguably suits the story’s off-the-map mood. Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.
Director: Agnieszka Smoczy?ska
Cast: Letitia Wright, Tamara Lawrance, Leah Mondesir-Simmonds, Eva-Arianna Baxter, Nadine Marshall, Treva Etienne, Michael Smiley, Jodhi May, Jack Bandeira, Kinga Preis, Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn
Production Companies: 42 MP (UK), Madants (Poland), Kindred Spirit (US)
Screenwriter: Andrea Seigel, adapting the book by Marjorie Wallace
Producers: Ben Pugh, Ewa Puszczy?ska, Anita Gou, Alicia Van Couvering, Letitia Wright
Cinematography: Jakub Kijowski
Editing: Agnieszka Gli?ska
Music: Marcin Macuk, Zuzanna Wro?ska
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard)
In English
113 minutes