Another week, another awesome vehicle for Letitia Wright, though to make this woozy biopic sound like a one-woman show would be a crime. The unshowy star of Aisha and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is excellent as would-be author June Gibbons, but Tamara Lawrance, as June’s controlling and whip-smart twin Jennifer, is just as intense. I thought I’d seen the double act of the year in Jim Archer’s black comedy, Brian and Charles. Nope. 2022 belongs to the heart-breakingly hilarious June and Jen.
The case became infamous as the twins wound up in Broadmoor Hospital, but when we first meet them they’re just precocious, if difficult, kids. Jennifer and June have made a pact. They give everyone but each other the silent treatment (even their nice mum and dad).
It’s possible the siblings, whose parents are from Barbados, experience small-town Wales as a hostile environment. The stories they invent often revolve around an exotic parrot who yearns to go “home”; they both have speech impediments and are shown being bullied by white peers. But the roots of their alienation have no one source. As becomes obvious, the teenage sisters (from this point played by Wright and Lawrance) are very cool. Too cool. They’re like defiantly fetid punks, miles from the King’s Road. The right people, in the wrong place.
Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska uses suitably lo-fi animation to capture the girls’ febrile interior world. One doomed dalmatian dog resembles a mouldy old sock. And she weaves all kinds of lovely, ethereal and death-centric ditties (based on songs composed by the Gibbons) into the action.
It’s sheer madness that the film has been rated 18. It’s ideal viewing for the kind of young goths who heart Tim Burton/Wes Anderson/Charlie Kaufman. And far from being dangerous, it tactfully explores tricky topics (including abusive sexual relationships, anorexia and suicide) in a way that would surely be useful for any youngster suffering from mental health issues or low self-esteem. The twins think about death and destruction. A lot. Well, so do the characters in Wuthering Heights. Teens need art like this in their lives.
There are a few mis-steps. Jodhi May’s Marjorie Wallace, a journalist who championed the twins and wrote a book about them, appears here as a moist-eyed protector. Nothing else about the film is sappy. Poor May; her character’s bland tears look so out of place. As for the ending, it’s a tad flat.
Those quibbles aside, The Silent Twins is a triumph. I left the cinema wanting to read June’s self-published book, The Pepsi-Cola Addict, and Jennifer’s work-in-progress, The Pugilist. What this singular film captures so well is that the sisters, far from being silent, had plenty to say. It’s a pleasure to listen.
113 mins, cert 18
