Film Reviews: The Silent Twins, Charlotte, Violent Night

****

This true story of twins who wouldn’t speak to anyone apart from their sibling, and existed in a private world of their own construction, has perhaps the most beguiling opening credit sequence of any recent film.

As the names of the major cast members appear on screen, the voices of the pair who play the younger versions of the twins can be heard reading out the names with relish and glee, especially when the final “Introducing Leah Mondesir-Simmonds and Eva-Arianna Baxter,” is reached. It’s a playful opening that instantly transports the audience into its protagonists’ secret enclave.

The story of June and Jennifer Gibbons is fairly well known and has already been the subject of a TV drama and documentary. The film is based on the book by Highgate-based journalist Marjorie Wallace, who features in the film played by Jodhi May. Born to Caribbean immigrant parents and growing up in Wales, around other people they refused to speak or interact, but on their own, they would chat away to each other and write and make toys. But when in their teenage years they began to dabble in boys, drugs and delinquency, the response by the state was to incarcerate them indefinitely in Broadmoor.

I went in expecting a long hard dose of British social realism, but Polish director Smoczynska’s first English language film, though harsh and heartrending, is packed with invention and style. The film includes stop-motion animation, and expressionistic touches that are directly inspired by the twins’ writing. For a lot of it, the viewer is placed inside their world, looking out. This perspective is often contrasted with the harsh reality of how they are viewed by the rest of the world.

There is a price to be paid for this. The film doesn’t address any social issues, and it could be argued that it reinforces notions of the otherness of twins. But the glory of the film is that it really celebrates the Gibbon sisters, movingly portrayed by Wright and Lawrance, as people, rather than case studies.

Directed by Agnieszka Smoczynska. Starring:  Letitia Wright, Tamara Lawrance, Leah Mondesir-Simmonds, Eva-Arianna Baxter, and Michael Smiley and Jodhi May. In cinemas. Running time: 112 mins.

Charlotte is an animation based on the life of artist Charlotte Saloman (Image: January Films)

Charlotte (12)

***

The Charlotte is Saloman, a young Jewish painter (voiced by Knightley) who fled Berlin in 1938, but only as far as the south of France where the Nazis would catch up with her five years later.

During this time she discovers that most of the women in her family commit suicide, and creates the work that would define her legacy, "Life? Or Theatre?" more than 1000 autobiographical paintings that would later be claimed as the first graphic novel.

Charlotte the film is a hand-drawn animation that follows most of the conventions of Holocaust-themed drama with one exception: rather than being a chronicle of a happy, carefree life cut short by genocide, here there's the suggestion she may have been doomed - or at least deeply troubled - before she arrived at Auschwitz.

It’s here perhaps that the cleanly drawn animation doesn’t do Charlotte's story justice. Rana and Warin’s film is nicely done, but the characters are too simply drawn to express much emotional depth, and the visuals are too orderly and organised to suggest the turmoil and darkness that is being explored.

Directed by Tahir Rana and Eric Warin. Featuring: Keira Knightley, Brenda Blethyn, Jim Broadbent, Eddie Marsan, Sam Claflin and Helen McCrory. Running time: 92 mins.

David Harbour stars as Santa Claus in Violent Night (Image: Universal Pictures)

Violent Night (15)

***

Violent night, holy night, all is crass, all is dark. With its Father-Christmas-as-an-action-hero set-up, this action comedy’s bid to join the ranks of seasonal perennials is both calculated and demented.

There is definitely a surface ingenuity to its mix of three Christmas classics: Bad Santa, Die Hard and Home Alone. Harbour is a disillusioned, cantankerous, potty-mouthed, drunk Father Christmas, who finds himself playing John McClane in a hostage situation after an obscenely rich family discover that their holiday catering staff are actually a ruthless criminal gang. Santa starts to fight back using Macauley Culkin-style improvised, slapstick violence.

This a film where you'll wish that Santa had the common decency to carry a gun. Instead, the action is a series of decapitations and dismemberings. The film really goes all in trying to live up to its title. There are many Christmas films that make you wince, but not usually because someone’s jaw has been impaled on a sharp nail.

Violent Night is junky and reductive, but effective, with strong performances, some funny lines and gruesomely inventive action - but anyone who enjoys this mix of sentimentality and sadism deserves to be put on the naughty list for eternity.

Directed by Tommy Wirkola. Starring David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Alex Hassell, Alexis Louder, Leah Brady, Cam Gigandet and Beverly D'Angelo. In cinemas. Running time: 112 mins.

Go to http://www.halfmanhalfcritic.com/ for a review of the Eureka Classic Blu-ray release of the Bob Hope version of The Cat And The Canary.