It’s hard to quantify quite what effect Two of Us will have on you. Filippo Meneghetti’s film is not a typical love story, nor is it a typical drama. It doesn’t beat its audience over the head with exposition, nor does it grant them full access to everything occurring within its various set pieces. It is a bleak film filled with sadness, regret, and guilt, and yet also one punctuated by love and passion, and with moments of joy and humor.
Co-written by Menehjetti and Malysone Bovorasmy, Two of Us (★★★★★) follows an older lesbian couple, Nina (Barbara Sukowa) and Madeleine (Martine Chevallier), who have kept their relationship hidden for decades, but now, after the death of Madeleine’s husband, are free to sell their neighboring apartments and leave France for Rome, where they first met. All they need is for Madeleine to break the news to her children — a task halted by insecurity and uncertainty, leading to a tense falling out between her and Nina.
A vicious exchange during that falling out plunges Nina into despair after Madeleine suffers a stroke, her children assigning a caregiver, their truth and life together left unspoken. Forced to watch from across the hall as her lover slowly recuperates, guilt and desperation eat away at Nina as she tries desperately to find reasons to see and spend time with Madeleine.
Two of Us quietly, devastatingly unpicks the ties that bound Nina and Madeleine’s life together, keeping it from view of the outside world. Sukowa delivers a master class performance, switching on the fly between any number of emotions — elation at Madeleine’s progress, anger at being kept from her, deep-rooted love in small moments of tenderness with her life partner.
One particularly notable scene takes place the first night Madeleine returns from hospital, as Nina must remain in her apartment and look at empty cupboards and bare rooms, her entire life clearly lived across the hall with Madeleine. Forced to eavesdrop and peer out of her peephole to figure out what’s going on, Meneghetti keeps the audience in the dark and on edge alongside Nina, as she quietly tiptoes across the hall and into Madeleine’s apartment — her apartment — to sit with her, or share memories with her, or climb into their bed and hold her tightly.
The narrative’s masterstroke is that it continues to unspool, stretching things further as Madeleine’s daughter Anne (Léa Drucker) discovers uncomfortable truths about her mother, and further separates Nina from Madeleine — which in turn only increases Nina’s desperation. The film often descends into dark places, such as Nina’s nightmares while in bed alone. In one deeply unsettling moment, Anne tells Nina that her mother only had one true love, her abusive father, who “tyrannized” Madeleine, while Meneghetti zooms into Madeleine’s open, unblinking eyes, as she sits between Anne and Nina at the table. Credit is also due to Chevallier for her performance as a silent, recovering Madeleine, seeing her life manipulated and maneuvered without her consent, unable to stop her separation from Nina despite evidence of its harm. With a simple glance, Chevallier conveys a thousand unspoken words.
With Two of Us, Meneghetti delivers not only one of the most compelling lesbian films ever made, but does so while also tackling aging, the secret lives many LGBTQ people lead, and the lengths some will go to in order to protect those they love. It is an incredibly moving, richly conveyed, powerfully acted, and beautifully constructed film that everyone should see.
Two of Us opens in theatres on Friday, Feb. 5, and is available on streaming and at virtual cinemas, including The Avalon. Visit www.theavalon.org.
Denzel Washington revealed that a scene in which he kisses another male actor was cut from the final version of the movie Ridley Scott's upcoming Gladiator II.
The Oscar-winning actor plays Macrinus, an ambitious, wealthy Roman businessman who is presumed to be bisexual in the film.
"I kissed the man in the film but they took it . I think they got chicken," he told Gayety. "I kissed a guy full on the lips, and I guess they weren’t ready for that yet."
The gesture, at least in the context of the movie's plot, was not a romantic one, but more of a sealing of one's fate.
On Saturday, November 16, Syracuse City Court Judge Felicia Pitts Davis was scheduled to perform two weddings.
She officiated the first, which involved a straight couple, but allegedly refused to perform the second between two women.
Another judge, Mary Anne Doherty, who is married to a woman, was called to come into court to officiate the same-sex marriage, reports the Syracuse-based newspaper The Post-Standard. The paper's sources claim Pitts Davis told Doherty she refused to conduct the ceremony due to her religious beliefs.
For more than two weeks, local and state court officials attempted to keep the judge's actions a secret, refusing to answer questions from The Post-Standard about what happened and refusing to acknowledge that any marriages had been performed in court that day.
In two very different plays currently on D.C. stages, two very different families rally around a grown son who's been the victim of a violent hate crime. While the Castros in John Leguizamo's The Other Americans at Arena confront anti-Latino bias in Queens, New York, the Benhamous of Joshua Harmon's Prayer for the French Republic at Theater J face rising antisemitism in Paris.
And while both plays are set in the recent past, both sharply reflect the atmosphere of this instant, where, at least on this side of the Pond, and according to FBI statistics, hate crimes against Jews and Latinos, among other groups, are on the rise. Not coincidentally, right-wing purveyors of hate are also ascending, now in the U.S., and in the Paris of 2016 that's depicted in Prayer.
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