Bucking Fastard review – Herzog’s starry twins soap provokes a syncing feeling

Venice film festival: Rooney and Kate Mara play the real-life Chaplin sisters who spoke in unsettling unison in this silly, pointless drama Werner Herzog is such a unique film-maker that even a dud from him has some interest, but sadly a dud is what this is. It is a fiction feature based on a true story which – despite a few laughs – systematically wastes the audience’s time, as well as the talents of its formidable female leads, real-life sisters Rooney and Kate Mara. You can almost feel this pointless, aimless film making it up as it goes along, losing its way, line by line, scene by scene. It is inspired by the story of twins Freda and Greta Chaplin from York in the UK; they eerily spoke in unison and in the 1980s were the subject of a highly publicised court case for harassing a neighbour. Herzog’s movie transplants their story to Ireland, in which the Maras play weirdly but comically interdependent sisters Jean and Joan Holbrook whose lives are sent in all sorts of loopy directions. Orlando Bloom plays the roguish neighbour who breaks the women’s hearts (Herzog imagines them as a short-lived throuple), and Domhnall Gleeson is a caring social worker who tries to make them less dysfunctional by taking their case after they move away from the scene of their sexual resentment and legal shame. (During the trial they shout out the spoonerism of the title.) Continue reading...

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