Featured Film Review
"Twin Sisters" or "De Tweeling"
© 2002 IDTV Film BV
Starring: Thekla Reuten, Nadja Uhl, Ellen Vogel and Gudrun Okras
Written by: Tessa de Loo (novel), Marieke van der Pol (screenplay)
Directed by: Ben Sombogaart
Runtime: 135 minutes
Rating: R for brief sexuality and a scene of violence
This Oscar nominee for `Best Foreign Language Film' is one of my favourite war movies; `Twin Sisters', or `De Tweeling' in Dutch is based on a novel by Dutch author Tessa de Loo.
Two six-year-old girls, twin sisters Anna and Lotte Bamberg, are separated by family members after their father dies of tuberculosis in 1922. Lotte is ill, so the family members who had their eyes on the children told the relatives from the Netherlands they could take the `sick one'. During the funeral, the girls are torn apart, Anna stays behind in Germany to `help' out on the farm, while Lotte recovers from tuberculosis in the Netherlands.
Years go by, and the girls are still apart. Intentionally kept apart by the selfish relatives who don't want to give either one up. Lotte leads a fairly comfortable life, but she still misses her twin sister. Anna is exploited by the family members she lives with as a free help on the farm. She longs to see her sister, and she longs to go to school.
When the sisters reach their late teens, early twenties; Lotte finally discovers the betrayal of her family and tries to contact Anna. In the mean time, Hitler is gaining ground in Germany, and Anna is interested in his ideas. However, her uncle, who is a communist, tries to beat some sense into her. The local priest finds the girl half-dead in the barn and takes her away. Anna finally gets part of her wish; she goes to school to become a maid.
In the Netherlands the threat of Hitler doesn't go unnoticed. Jews who fled from Germany settle in `neutral' countries, like the Netherlands. This is when Lotte meets David, a very talented pianist who couldn't stay in Germany to complete his training to build pianos. Lotte and David fall in love; they spend days sailing, playing the piano and singing together.
When Anna receives Lotte's first letter she is beside herself with joy. The two sisters correspond for a while as Anna tries to get settled in her new environment; the household of a countess. After sending letters back and forth, Lotte visits her twin sister for the first time in years. She begs Anna to come to the Netherlands with her, but the countess won't let Anna go.
Back home, Lotte writes her sister to tell her not to bother coming over or contacting her again. She suspects Anna is anti Semitic, and Lotte's love is Jewish. When Anna receives the letter, she is grief-stricken. After being apart all these years she'd finally sensed she belonged somewhere when Lotte came to visit. That night, Anna meets Martin Grosalie, a young Austrian who has been drafted in the nazi army. Martin and Anna fall in love, and after several months of courting they marry in Austria.
Lotte's fiancé, David, gets arrested when he goes back to retrieve the purse she had unintentionally left behind. After several weeks his parents receive a message from him, telling them he is in Buchenwald, one of the concentration camps. David's parents and brother have to go into hiding, and the most logical place seems to be at Lotte's house, even though her foster father doesn't like the idea. A few months later, they receive another message from David saying the Germans have transported him to Auswitz. Around this time, Anna also receives bad news, her husband Martin died in the German Eiffel.
After the war ends, Anna goes to the Netherlands to find her sister and finds her married to David's brother. Lotte just gave birth to a daughter, Hester, and she is very bitter towards everything German even her own twin sister. When she sees the portrait of Anna and her husband, in SS uniform, she kicks Anna out and tells her never to come back.
Decades after the war, they accidentally run into each other in a Belgian spa. Anna recognises her sister instantly, while Lotte tries to keep her sister at arm's length. The war drove a rift between the sisters; Lotte blames Anna for not seeing what happened during the holocaust, and Anna asks her sister why the western world let it happen.
The filming of this excellent novel is an epic drama, and shows how the war destroyed the lives of survivors as well. It shows both sides of the medal, the Germans who didn't know what was going on in their country, as well as the Dutch who rebelled against the German occupancy.
The cast of the film hails from both the Netherlands and Germany; Thekla Reuten plays the young Lotte, and the grand dame of Dutch film Ellen Vogel plays the elderly Lotte. Nadja Uhl and Gudrun Okras play the younger and elder versions of the German half of the twins.
If you are in the mood to watch a foreign language film, this is one I would highly recommend. I recently bought the DVD and watched it again around May 5th, the day that signifies the end of World War II in the Netherlands.
Reviewer: Athena Sydney
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