Film Talk: Latest Movie Releases – Sibling biopic hoping to strike the Wright chord
She was the star of the show even when she wasn’t.
Celebrated as one of Marvel Studios’ best and most significant flicks to date, 2018’s Black Panther was a triumph for its director and stars.
Winner of three Oscars, this one showcased the magnificent talent of the late Chadwick Boseman front and centre. And as the highest-grossing film of all time by an African American director, it will now rightfully forever serve as filmmaker Ryan Coogler’s first and foremost calling card.
Still, for me, these two chaps were not the heroes of this hero piece. That honour belongs squarely to another.
Though she had long since been making waves with roles in Black Mirror, Humans, and Doctor Who, Black Panther was my first experience of the incredible Letitia Wright – a Guyanese-British actor for whom further big things were surely on the horizon.
With a healthy supply of pluck, Wright shone in the shoes of Boseman’s on-screen sister, Shuri – a tech whizz with both brains and sass packed in to the brim. For her performance she won an NAACP Image Award, and it was here that audiences truly stopped and marked her card. Wright has continued to excel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, now having reprised the role of Shuri on three occasions, and has made her mark with turns in Steven Spielberg smash, Ready Player One, and Agatha Christie mystery, Death on the Nile.
Now however, we see the gifted star taking on a different challenge with The Silent Twins. Directed by Agnieszka Smoczynska, this one puts Wright opposite the talented Tamara Lawrance, who packed quite the punch in 2018 BBC drama, The Long Song. Do they both shine here like we know they can? Let’s take a look...
THE SILENT TWINS (18, 113 mins)
Released: December 9 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)
Such devoted sisters. Adapted by screenwriter Andrea Seigel from the book by award-winning investigative journalist Marjorie Wallace, The Silent Twins is a stylistically ambitious dramatisation of the true story of June and Jennifer Gibbons, who forged a pact from an early age to speak exclusively to each other.
Growing up in 1960s Wales where they were the only black pupils at school, the siblings wrote copiously in private, immersed in an imaginary world of handmade puppets, which stop-motion animator Barbara Rupik realises on screen in vibrant and naively disturbing vignettes.
Polish director Agnieszka Smoczynska utilises June and Jennifer’s written words to chart a haphazard course through the girls’ traumatic childhoods, punctuated by psychological and physical abuse, and a turbulent adolescence culminating in charges of arson and petty theft.
Seigel’s script confidently juggles incendiary subject matter – burgeoning female sexuality, mental illness, racial discrimination – but struggles to weave a strong emotional thread through upsetting scenes of June and Jennifer’s self-destruction despite scintillating performances from Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance, and Leah Mondesir-Simmonds and Eva-Arianna Baxter as the twins at different stages.
The Gibbons sisters distanced themselves from family and peers behind a wall of silence. Similarly, Smoczynska’s daring and admirable picture doesn’t fully let us in. June (Mondesir-Simmonds) is born 10 minutes before Jennifer (Baxter) but the younger twin is the dominant personality at home in Haverfordwest, where their father Aubrey (Treva Etienne) – part of the Windrush generation – is stationed as an air traffic controller for the RAF.
The twins refuse to engage verbally with the rest of the clan including their mother Gloria (Nadine Marshall) and older siblings Greta (Amarah-Jae St Aubyn) and David (Hubert Sylla).
Only when they are alone in their bedroom do the girls communicate in a hushed, barely intelligible patois, conjuring fantastical stories and poems with handmade puppets and entertaining fanciful dreams of becoming world famous writers.
As they enter teenagehood, June (now played by Wright) and Jennifer (Lawrance) nurture a mutual obsession with hellraising local lad Wayne (Jack Bandeira).
He kindles their sexual awakening and June sparks combustible sibling rivalry by pooling dole money to publish her book The Pepsi-Cola Addict.
“You’re just jealous,” she spits at her sister.
“You’re a hack,” angrily retorts Jennifer, immersed in her first novel about a physician, who transplants the heart of the family dog into his critically ill baby son. The siblings are eventually admitted to Broadmoor psychiatric hospital “without limit of time” where journalist Marjorie Wallace (Jodhi May) takes an interest in their case.
The Silent Twins is a surrealistic biopic that lives, breathes (and sometimes chokes) on director Smoczynska’s audacious flourishes including a splashy Busby Berkeley-style fantasia replete with synchronised swimmers and introspective scenes narrated in song by Lawrance.
Even when the storytelling falters, the craftsmanship is exemplary, mirroring the brutal tug of war between imagination and harsh reality that alienated the Gibbons from their surroundings, until the sisterly bond was severed by the one force beyond June and Jennifer’s control: death.
THE QUINTESSENTIAL QUINTUPLETS MOVIE (12A, 136 mins)
Released: December 7 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)
Adapted from the popular manga series written and illustrated by Negi Haruba, The Quintessential Quintuplets is an animated TV series about five identical sisters and their relationship with their senior high school tutor.
After two seasons of small-screen angst, the story concludes in a feature film written by Keiichiro Ochi and directed by Masato Jinbo.
Nakano sisters Ichika (voiced by Kana Hanazawa), Nino (Ayana Taketatsu), Miku (Miku Ito), Yotsuba (Ayane Sakura) and Itsuki (Inori Minase) have grown close to their part-time tutor, Futaro Uesugi (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka).
He has guided their education but also made the girls’ hearts flutter.
As the Nakano siblings conclude their third year of high school and look forward to their final school festival, they excitedly wonder which of them Futaro will choose to marry. Jinbo’s film is released in the UK and Ireland in two versions: Japanese with subtitles and English language dubbing.
NOCEBO (15, 97 mins)
Released: December 9 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)
Award-winning Irish filmmaker Lorcan Finnegan builds on the success of his second feature, Vivarium starring Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots, with a supernatural thriller penned by Garret Shanley.
Fashion designer Christine (Eva Green) is in the grip of a mystery illness that baffles doctors.
Her husband Felix (Mark Strong) fears the ailment could be psychosomatic, so he is initially delighted when a Filipino carer called Diana (Chai Fonacier) arrives at their front door and uses traditional folk healing to ease Christine’s suffering.
It’s a miraculous turn of events but Diana has an ulterior motive for worming her way into Christine and Felix’s home.
The couple’s young daughter Bobs (Billie Gadson) notices her mother behaving oddly after Diana’s intervention and Felix becomes convinced that the carer exerts an unhealthy control over his spouse.
MR BACHMANN AND HIS CLASS (PG, 217 mins)
Released: December 9 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)
Inspirational teachers have frequently shared valuable life lessons on the big screen in crowd-pleasers including Goodbye, Mr Chips, Educating Rita, Dead Poets Society and School Of Rock. Maria Speth’s documentary trades fiction for unvarnished real life by celebrating an unorthodox teacher, who is dedicated to helping first and second-generation immigrant pupils find their place in the world.
Dieter Bachmann is a beloved educator at Georg Buchner Comprehensive in the town of Stadtallendorf, where he takes charge of class 6B and encourages his flock to listen and learn. The children are aged between 12 and 14 and hail from different countries. Many speak only basic, fractured German and they are seemingly separated by their religious and cultural backgrounds. Using music as a unifying force, Herr Bachmann compels the youngsters to find their voices and self-confidence and give valuable feedback on each other’s work.
A LOVE SONG (PG, 81 mins)
Released: December 9 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)
Childhood sweethearts discover if they still hold a torch for each other in a slow-burning romantic drama, which marks the feature film debut of writer-director Max Walker-Silverman.
Faye (Dale Dickey) waits alone at a remote campsite in Colorado with just an old transistor radio for company, patiently counting down the hours to the arrival of old flame Tito (Wes Studi).
She isn’t sure if he will materialise on the date marked on her calendar, or what will happen if they are reunited following the death of her husband. Regardless, Faye politely refuses to move from the designated spot.
