Two of Us

This is a film about the dou­ble-edged sword of being lovers and neigh­bours. In the pros col­umn, it’s very easy to pop next door and stay as long as you like – maybe all night if so inclined. It also means you have your own pri­vate space to fall back on, allow­ing for some of the emo­tion­al messi­ness of a tra­di­tion­al con­ju­gal set-up to be sidelined.

In the cons col­umn, there’s the temp­ta­tion to cloak the rela­tion­ship in secre­cy, which is exact­ly what Nina (Bar­bara Sukowa) and Made­line (Mar­tine Cheval­li­er) choose to do. They clear­ly rel­ish the thrill of play­ing out a shad­owy, pri­vate romance, as well as the per­for­mance aspect to their sit­u­a­tion, but there’s also the fear that they could be out­ed at any moment.

Being of a gen­er­a­tion that still feels the social stig­ma of same-sex part­ner­ships, Made­line decides that she doesn’t want her fam­i­ly to know about her love affair with Nina, and so there’s a lev­el of crafti­ness and sub­tle sup­pres­sion that weighs on the mechan­ics of their relationship.

It’s an intrigu­ing set-up which sug­gests a light, the­atri­cal farce with lots of com­ic mis­un­der­stand­ings, gri­maces and slammed doors. And it is like that ini­tial­ly, as the cen­tral two­some trade affec­tion­ate barbs with one anoth­er and bick­er about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mov­ing house dur­ing their advanced years. Madeline’s mod­ern out­look on sex and rela­tion­ships is under­cut by a sense of para­noia that her chil­dren might be offend­ed that this secret has been kept from them for so long.

Debut fea­ture direc­tor Fil­ip­po Meneghet­ti keeps things very sim­ple and large­ly rides on the tails of his effort­less­ly charm­ing cen­tral per­form­ers. There’s a roman­tic detach­ment to the way he films – it’s not played as full-blown social real­ism, anchored more in the light­ly stylised Sirkian melo­dra­mas of the 1950s or, more recent­ly, the films of Pedro Almodóvar.

There’s a pre­ci­sion to the craft that works to enhance the mate­r­i­al, almost imbu­ing it with a fairy tale qual­i­ty. And for that mat­ter, at the film’s mid­point, when it’s look­ing like we’re head­ing to a big, hap­py rev­e­la­tion about love con­quer­ing regres­sive social atti­tudes, the film takes a sharp left turn and all the anx­i­eties felt by the char­ac­ters until that point sud­den­ly seem trifling.

What begins as a film about the wor­ry of keep­ing up appear­ances becomes a lament to those who, for what­ev­er rea­son, are unable to embrace their desires to the fullest. As the dynam­ic of the rela­tion­ship sud­den­ly alters, the more enlight­ened and lib­er­al Nina has her work cut out for her, and she tries des­per­ate­ly to find a way to pre­serve this deep love while at the same time remain­ing respect­ful of her beloved Madeline.

There are moments where the film does err on the side of the sen­ti­men­tal, and some of the side char­ac­ters – Madeline’s daugh­ter, a hos­pi­tal car­er – feel a lit­tle but one-note. But it’s eas­i­ly for­giv­able as Meneghett is clear­ly work­ing in the reg­is­ter of the out-and-out tear­jerk­er, and he most def­i­nite­ly suc­ceeds on those terms. All that’s left to do is start the count­down for the inevitable Hol­ly­wood remake.