Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Dutch Bestseller About Separated Twins Turned Into An Oscar Nominated Film About War And Sacrifice, January 4, 2007
Trying to catch up on some of the significant international cinema of the last few years, I stumbled across the Dutch epic "Twin Sisters." Based on an enormously popular bestseller, this is a much honored film that represented the Netherlands at the 2004 Academy Awards. While set largely during World War II, and having much to say about the subject, this is first and foremost a study of sisterly love and commitment. For even though the characters are separated through the bulk of the picture, the loss and the bond that these sisters have infuse every scene and every decision that they make.
The film starts with a brilliant setup. When two young girls are left orphans in Germany, they are wanted by two different sets of in-laws. The German in-laws are a poor farming family who need free labor, while the rich in-laws live in the Netherlands and want to bring the girls up properly. A concession is made that pleases neither, but eliminates further debate. Lotte, who has consumption, is given away to the Dutch family who can try to cure her and Anna, the healthy one, is kept on the German farm. It is that random--the course of your whole existence decided in a split second. It's an interesting and thought-provoking topic.
Lotte is cured and leads a life of privilege. Playing the piano, luxuriating on yachts, and finding romance and engagement with a family friend--you can't help but envy her lifestyle. Anna, meanwhile, is kept from school by being declared "retarded," worked, and brutalized on the farm. The two girls lose complete track of one another, their "parents" have each made independent decisions that it is best if they don't communicate. Eventually realizing they are each still alive, they reconnect--but much has changed, including the rise of Nazism. The film looks at Anna's life as a German, she is a maid and supports her country. And the film examines Lotte's life. While still a German, she sees things from the outside--and, in fact, her fiance is Jewish.
The beauty of "Twin Sisters" is that you see these girls evolve as products of their environments. Each has much to be admired, but each makes terrible mistakes. Your allegiance flip-flops back and forth as you inevitably get caught up in their stories. The cast is impeccable. Through different ages, and through a narrative flashback structure, there is a lot of story to be told here. Occasionally, I wished to be able to spend more time in a certain sequence--to really feel its import. But there is no question that the film packs an emotional wallop. I respected "Twin Sisters," it's a serious minded film for people who like adult entertainment. The ultimate moral dilemma is posed, what if things were different? What if the roles had been reversed, would the outcome have been the same? Good stuff. KGHarris, 01/07.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A sad time for Europe. And especially for these separated twin sisters., October 26, 2005
This 2002 Dutch film is based on a novel which sold millions of copies in The Netherlands and Germany. It was probably never released in the United States because the only reviews I found were from Europe or Australia. And all of these reviewers hated this film. That sure was a surprise because I loved it.
The story starts in the late 1920s when two 6-year old Dutch twins are separated after their parents' death and sent to live with distant relatives. Anna is sent to Germany where she is raised as a catholic, denied an education, forced to do backbreaking labor on a farm and beaten severely as a teenager when she is attracted to a young man who plans to be a Nazi. Lotte is raised in an upper middle class Dutch family and given every advantage. The two sisters are forbidden to see each other but do meet again in the late 1930s. By this time Anna is working as a maid for a wealthy German countess who is connected with the Nazi regime and Lotte is college educated and engaged to marry a Jew. Their meeting is brief though and they do not see each other again until after the war.
This is now a sad time for all of Europe. Anna's Austrian husband has been killed on the Russian front. Lotte's Jewish boyfriend has died in a concentration camp and The sisters have a terrible fight, with Lotte accusing Anna of being a Nazi and Anna fleeing in tears from her sister's home.
This is all told in flashbacks as the basic narrative is one of the two elderly women meeting at a European spa in modern times. Lotte is clearly upscale, her white hair arranged in a salon hairdo, her clothes new and fashionable. Anna looks more like a servant who has led a harsh life. She is the one who has tracked her sister down with the hope of reconciliation in their old age.
Yes, this was all melodramatic. But the acting was so good, the screenplay so intriguing and the directing so fast paced, that I was absolutely caught up in the story and couldn't take my eyes from the screen. I also felt real emotion throughout and consider this film a real discovery. So, in spite of the European critics and in spite of the fact that this film might be hard to find, I definitely recommend it.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fate puts a pair of sisters onto the opposing sides of World War II, October 7, 2005
Not too long ago I watched "Out of the Ashes," which was about a Jewish-Hungarian doctor who survived Auschwitz because she was assigned to assist Joseph Mengele in his diabolical experiments on the prisoners. Mengele devoted much of his "research" to the study of twins, with his goal being to discover how Aryan women could give birth to twins, thereby improving the master race and no doubt increasing the number of soldiers who could serve the Third Reich. "De Twilling" ("Twin Sisters") talks about Auschwitz, but never goes there, and while this film is set against World War II and the Holocaust, I would not qualify it as being about the Holocaust. However, I do find it quite ironic that this 2002 film from the Netherlands, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, tells a horror story about twins being separated not by Nazis but rather by their own family.
In 1926 a pair of orphaned twins are separated when their parents die. Young Anna (Nadja Uhl) goes to live on a poor farm in Germany. Her guardians tell everyone that Anna is mentally retarded so that she can stay home from school and do chores and be beaten by her "father" (think Cosette from "Les Miserables"). Meanwhile, little Lotte (Thekla Reuten), who suffers from tuberculosis, is raised by a wealthy Dutch family and learns to play the piano after recovering. The young girls desperately want to write to each other, but such letters are unsent or unreceived, and their only contact appears to be on a psychic level when one of them is in great pain or other emotional distress. However, as they grow older this connection fades away, although there is much more emotional pain to come.
The main narrative thread of "De Twilling" tells the story of Anna and Lotte through 1944, emphasizing the different lives they live. Anna (Sina Richardt) becomes a servant while Lotte (Julia Koopmans) enjoys her privileged life. But the most important distinction comes at the time that the two find each other once again, because Lotte is in love with David (Jeroen Spitzenberger), who is Jewish, and Anna has fallen for Martin (Roman Knizka), who ends up in the S.S. You should be able to see in general terms where this one is going, because as we follow their story in the past we also see old Lotte (Ellen Vogel) and old Anna (Gudrun Okras) in the present, as old women, and clearly Anna does not want to have anything to do with Lotte. Something horrible must have happened to make one twin, who was so desperate to find her long list twin, to turn her back on her sister when they were finally together.
"De Twilling" is directed by Ben Sombogaart ("Mijn vader woont in Rio," "Het Zakmes"), with a script by Marieke van der Pol adapted by Tessa de Loo's best-selling novel. The result is somewhat melodramatic and the film requires the empathy generated by the first section, when the twin sisters are still young and their plight is so heartbreaking, to sustain it through the grim joke that Fate plays on them during the war. Some viewers will find it to be too manipulative, and the ending will either be seen as redemptive or simply the pulling out the final cliché in the deck. World War II is kept in the background, details coming in newspapers or letters, rather than marching troops or exploding shells, which simply underscores that what matters is how Fate has put the sisters on opposite sides. This matters because clearly Fate is the culprit here and if it had been Lotte who had TB instead of Anna we have to believe the results would have been the same, which for this film would be the biggest horror of them all.
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