FILM REVIEW 
 “Two of Us” Follows Closeted Lesbians 
 A secret romance generates its own kind of adversity  
 BY STEVE ERICKSON 
 The closet still makes for  
 great  dramatic  motivation. 
  After all, there are  
 only so many reasons  
 why lovers can’t live openly together. 
 Filippo Meneghetti’s “Two of Us”  
 sets up a relationship between two  
 elderly women who live next door  
 to each other in the same apartment  
 building. They fi nally plan to  
 move to Rome to live more openly,  
 but Madeleine (Martine Chevalier) 
  can’t work up the courage to  
 come out to her daughter Anne  
 (Léa Drucker), who believes Madeleine’s  
 late husband still remains  
 the great love of her life. It doesn’t  
 occur  to  the  couple  that  the  informality  
 of their arrangement  
 could be a danger to their ability  
 to continue it. One day, she has a  
 stroke. Her partner Nina (Martine  
 Martine Chevallier and Barbara Sukowa in “Two of Us.”  
 Chevalier) has to fi ght with Anne  
 and hired caregiver Muriel (Muriel  
 Benazeraf) to remain the central  
 person in her life. 
 MAGNOLIA PICTURES 
 “Two of Us” plays with a sinister  
 claustrophobia. While not a horror  
 fi lm  or  thriller,  it borrows  images  
 and ideas from them. In an opening  
 scene which turns out to be  
 a dream, a young girl hangs out  
 in a park, becoming frightened  
 by the sound of screeching birds.  
 The apartment building is treated  
 like a character, and not a friendly  
 one. Repeatedly, the camera is positioned  
 to simulate the view from  
 an apartment peephole. The apartment  
 hallways are dingy and barely  
 lit.  An  air  of menace  pervades  
 them. One almost expects the  
 creepy twin girls  from “The Shining” 
  to make a cameo appearance. 
 However, this is the place where  
 Nina and Madeleine have fallen  
 in love. Once their connection is  
 threatened,  Nina  fi ghts  desperately  
 to cling to it, even though  
 Madeleine’s ability to understand  
 her immediately after the stroke  
 is questionable. The fi lm does not  
 idealize her. Some of her behavior  
 towards Muriel is appalling.  
 But even her worst depths convey  
 her passionate desire to stay with  
 Madeleine. Without getting didactic, 
  “Two of Us” shows the damage  
 caused by homophobia. Nina and  
 Madeleine have been together for  
 20 years without being open about  
 it. The shocked response of Anne,  
 who even tries drugging her mother  
 into submission, shows why they  
 were justifi ed in fearing the outside  
 world and treating the apartment  
 building, small and dirty as it is,  
 as their sanctuary. 
 Chevalier has a background in  
 French theater; the opening credits  
 tells us that she’s a member of the  
 venerable Comédie Française. Sukowa  
 is a veteran of New German  
 Cinema, having starred in gay director  
 Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s  
 “Lola” and “Berlin Alexanderplatz”  
 and several fi lms by Margarethe  
 von Trotta. Her performance has  
 a Teutonic coldness. “Two of Us”  
 avoids the temptation of romanticism. 
   Rather  than  hearts  and  
 fl owers,  it  does  its  best  to  bring  
 forward the story’s dark intensity.  
 Meneghetti is an Italian who recently  
 moved to France. While I  
 don’t know his sexual orientation,  
 the feeling of displacement in one’s  
 own home lingering behind the  
 fi lm resonates in several ways. 
 Meneghetti tends to speak with  
 images  rather  than  words.  We  
 learn about Madeleine’s stroke by  
 seeing  an  untended  dish  of  food  
 on a burning stove, in danger of  
 causing a fi re, in an extended shot.  
 The  fi nal scene uses an Italian  
 pop song from the early ‘60s to tell  
 the couple’s story. But the thrilleradjacent  
 touches never really pay  
 off. Unless I missed something, the  
 dream scenes showing two young  
 girls who may be in danger don’t  
 turn  into  a  coherent  subplot,  beyond  
 serving as a vague metaphor  
 for Nina and Madeleine’s relationship. 
 All too often, LGBTQ identity is  
 seen as a recent trend, even by heterosexuals  
 who are basically sympathetic  
 to us. “Two of Us” shows  
 what happens when liberation is  
 more theoretical than practical  
 and easier to  live out  in your 20s  
 than 70s. Unlike many fi lms about  
 lesbians by men,  it avoids  leering  
 at them. It gazes hard into darkness  
 without being defi ned by it. 
 TWO OF US | Directed by Filippo  
 Meneghetti | Magnolia Pictures |  
 In French with English subtitles |  
 Starts streaming through New Plaza  
 Cinema Feb. 4 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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