Based on the lives of June and Jennifer Gibbons, real-life identical twins grew up in Wales and became known as “the silent twins” because they refused to communicate with anyone other than each other.
Reviewing the transcript of a senior high school student today, I asked, “So what were you doing while everyone else was doing school?” I would ask writer Andrea Seigel something like, “So what were you doing while everyone else thought you would snag the essence of this film noir in your script?” Perhaps Ms. Seigel would have fared better had she put Ms. Wallace’s book down and told the story of twins June and Jennifer Gibbons in her way, rather than attempting to follow the written story too closely. Given the film’s palette, mixing the artistry of music and cinematography, the story can flow through those mediums in scenes of little dialog or even silence. With such an interesting and sad subject matter, this film is overly long and sometimes tedious.
Director Smoczynska could have worked to contain a script of too many scenes and details but chose to direct the script she was given. The story of the twins, June and Jennifer Gibbons, is fascinating. Bullied as children in a Welsh town where a black family from Barbados is an oddity of predictable proportions, the twins withdraw into themselves to such a degree they use select mutism to wall themselves off and reduce their anxieties. They have richly creative internal lives, and it quickly becomes more fun to play out the stories they concoct between only each other. As outside forces seek to push them to talk, those forces only cement their determination to speak only to each other and not in the presence of others.
This film is a treasure for psychologists and therapists. June and Jennifer’s story begs many theories, suppositions, and questions as to the basis of their self-destructive relationship. Twins have their own language and sometimes even an unusually close emotional tie. However, cases of select mutism in twins are rare. This film is what, in my youth, we called “art films” and flocked to revel in the beauty of daring film shots and dark plot lines that only we could comprehend and appreciate. Unfortunately, much of the art is missing here.
Not totally, thank goodness, for there are lovely shots of the twins as young children at play, followed by stark images at school, standing outlined in the snow. Often the appearance of snow appears in scenes that depict how, over the course of time, starkness and frigidity invade their lives as those lives unravel.
The story is filled with metaphors that brings the twins closer but also tears them apart. They unwittingly create an equilibrium between them. In the beginning, both love the stories they create and act out together in their room. Both feel equally a participant and creator. When June orders and receives a typewriter, they are no longer equal as she begins to put her stories into words and is eventually published. Lack of equality produces jealousy, and the cracks in their relationship begin to appear.
Tamara Lawrance, as Jennifer, is lovely and terrifying in her portrayal of the sister whose jealousy, anger, and fear are her undoing. Leticia Wright, as June, plays in stark, stand-apart introversion to her high-strung twin. In choosing that stance, she comes across as less believable than Ms. Lawrence.
Jodhi May is ineffectual as the ineffectual reporter who writes the twins’ story. The cast is good, deserving a better script and a more vital director. The story of the “silent twins” is intriguing, mysterious, and ultimately very sad.
In Theaters Friday, September 16th
