Agnieszka Smoczynska’s strange, whimsical and somber film “The Silent Twins” feels like a minor miracle. In a cinematic landscape where it seems like there’s only room for the predictably bombastic or prestigious, the odd, heartfelt gems that manage to slip through are to be celebrated.
Adapted by Andrea Seigel from the 1986 book by Marjorie Wallace, “The Silent Twins” is a creative, quirky and fantastical biopic of June and Jennifer Gibbons, British twins from Wales who communicated only with each other and through their creative writing. It is the third feature from Polish filmmaker Smoczynska, who broke through in 2015 with her genre-smashing debut, “The Lure,” a mermaid horror musical, and she brings a similarly inventive approach to imagining the insular world of June and Jennifer.
Text at the end indicates that the Gibbons’ written work has been incorporated throughout, including their poems, novels and short stories. Many of these pieces have been adapted literally, into rather macabre stop-motion animation sequences carefully crafted by Barbara Rupik. The first is a story about a pair of parrots living in a gilded cage, losing all of their purple feathers. The second is a fable about a doctor and his wife who have to sacrifice a loved one for the life of their baby. Rupik’s work is simultaneously grotesque and charming, providing a playful, wistful texture.
