The Silent Twins

Jen­nifer and June Gib­bons were iden­ti­cal twins who loved writ­ing, art and had vivid imag­i­na­tions which enabled them to cre­ate fan­tas­ti­cal sto­ries. They also refused to speak to any­one except each oth­er, which earned them the moniker ​‘The Silent Twins’ and result­ed in ostraci­sa­tion and bul­ly­ing. After attempts to sep­a­rate the girls result­ed in them becom­ing cata­ton­ic, they were allowed to remain togeth­er, but lat­er bouts of drug use and pet­ty crime result­ed in them being detained in Broad­moor Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal, where they remained for 11 years. In 1993, when they were moved to a less restric­tive clin­ic in Wales, Jen­nifer died dur­ing tran­sit. The cause of her death has nev­er been ful­ly determined.

This con­text is impor­tant for under­stand­ing Agniesz­ka Smoczyńska’s adap­ta­tion of Mar­jorie Wallace’s book about the twins, which boasts a fierce imag­i­na­tion and utilis­es var­i­ous cre­ative tech­niques in an attempt to cel­e­brate the life of two women who were repeat­ed­ly failed by soci­ety. Despite its noble inten­tions, The Silent Twins is a broad-brush depic­tion of the Gib­bons sis­ters’ lives, one that fails to rep­re­sent the insti­tu­tion­al racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion which had a pro­found­ly dam­ag­ing effect on them and quite pos­si­bly led to Jennifer’s death.

The film opens with an ani­mat­ed fourth wall break­ing cred­it sequence as Eva-Ari­ana Bax­ter and Leah Mon­de­sir Sim­mons (who play the Gib­bons twins as chil­dren) intro­duce the cast. It’s a charm­ing scene that sug­gests a lev­i­ty the film is keen to thread through the sto­ry, as Jen­nifer and June’s shared lan­guage and imag­i­na­tion pro­vide an escape from a world that con­tin­u­al­ly refus­es to under­stand them. This is con­trast­ed against a stark real­i­ty full of sour-faced bureau­crats and kind­ly but con­cerned onlook­ers who con­sis­tent­ly rein­force the idea that the twins’ strong bond is detri­men­tal to their health.

This is where the film fal­ters. Grow­ing up in the 1980s, espe­cial­ly as a Black child with a per­ceived men­tal ill­ness, would like­ly have come with a great deal more stig­ma, racism and hard­ship than Smoczyńs­ka and Siegel depict. It also fails to con­vey that Broad­moor was one of the most noto­ri­ous psy­chi­atric facil­i­ties in the coun­try – a place where ​‘patients’ includ­ed Peter Sut­cliffe and Ron­nie Kray – and abuse was rampant.

The Gib­bons fam­i­ly has spo­ken about how the twins’ health declined as a result of being held against their will for 11 years, but this film does not do a great deal to con­demn the dra­con­ian struc­tures that pur­port­ed to pro­tect the twins but, in real­i­ty, only served to harm them. Despite a strong ensem­ble, the sto­ry stops short of con­demn­ing the cru­el­ty of the sys­tem, which feels cru­cial to why they might have retreat­ed so much into them­selves and the imag­i­nary worlds they cre­at­ed together.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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