The Skeleton Twins (2014)

The Skeleton Twins (2014)

Director: Craig Johnson
Writers: Craig Johnson, Mark Heyman
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Language: English
Duration: 93 min

Stars: Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Luke Wilson

The Skeleton Twins je odlična i drama i komedija koja će vas iskreno i nasmijati i ratužiti.
Maggie Dean (Kristen Wiig) dobija poziv iz bolnice u San Francisku da je njen brat Milo (Bill Hader) pokušao samoubistvo, ali da je dobro. Odlazi po njega i nagovara ga da jedno vrijeme provedu zajedno kod nje u NY city, gdje živi sa mužem.

Milo odlazi kod nje i polako upoznaje sestrin život koji spolja izgleda prelijepo ali suština je da se njen život vrti u gomili laži i prevara prema mužu.
Milo, koji je gay, glumac u pokušaju koji je pokušao samoubistvo zbog nezadovoljstva svojim životom, neuspjehom da se afirmiše kao glumac i uzaludnom potragom za srodnom dušom uviđa da se njegova sestra blizankinja vrti u krug tražeći sebe u braku koji pokušava da održi i njene strasti za nekim novim kurcem koje pronalazi kod raznih instruktora ronjenja, kuvanja itd. Uporedo sa svojim seksualnim izletima muža drži u uvjerenju da sa njim želi djecu i sretan porodičan život.
Nasuprot tome Milo želi da rasčisti ostatke iz prošlosti i sastaje sa profesorom koji mu je uzeo nevinost kada je imao 15 godina, ali i dalje glumi str8 porodičnog čovjeka.

Kako su Maggie i Milo emocionalno jako povezani njih dvoje mogu iskreno da pričaju o životu, nadanjima i željama, pa i o onim stvarima koje ne mogu da podjele sa drugima.

Film je za svaku preporuku i ostavlja nas da razmišljamo  da li živimo onako kako bi željeli ili samo glumimo.

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

As “The Skeleton Twins” deftly glides between drama and comedy, it peels away layers of personal history in the lives of its troubled main characters, twin siblings estranged for a decade who share an eerie emotional synchronicity. At the very moment Maggie Dean (Kristen Wiig), a dental hygienist in upstate New York, is about to gulp a lethal fistful of sleeping pills, she receives a call informing her that her brother, Milo (Bill Hader), a failed actor in Hollywood, is in the hospital after slashing his wrists.
Suicidal tendencies may run in the Dean family; their father killed himself when they were teenagers. Their mother (Joanna Gleason, in a brief, amusing cameo) is a grandiose New Age-spouting narcissist with impenetrable emotional armor.
Maggie, a dutiful sister, reluctantly makes a place for Milo in the home she shares with her husband, Lance (Luke Wilson), a happy-go-lucky jock. And the peeling begins.
The movie, directed by Craig Johnson (the tiny indie “True Adolescents”) from a screenplay he wrote with Mark Heyman (a writer on “Black Swan”), is keenly attuned to the bonds of siblings, especially twins. If countless movies about brothers and sisters reveal common family traits, “The Skeleton Twins” is subtler than most in evoking a mutual sympathy that might be called a cellular understanding.
Being so completely simpatico has its good and bad sides because the person who best understands you can also inflict the most painful emotional wounds. After working closely together on “Saturday Night Live,” Ms. Wiig and Mr. Hader suggest that kind of intuitive connection, even when their characters here are at loggerheads.

Lance, an unflappably optimistic and confident outsider, is aware of Maggie’s instability, which he takes in stride, cheerfully referring to her moods as “land mines” that he has no problem navigating. The three make an appealingly oddball little family once Milo, who is gay, lonely and not entirely comfortable with his sexuality, settles in.
“The Skeleton Twins” is a well-written and acted movie about contemporary life that doesn’t strain for melodrama and is largely devoid of weepy soap opera theatrics. A small, precise, character-driven vignette, it has no pretensions to make any kind of grand statement about The Way We Live Now.

That’s all the more admirable, considering that the wedge between Maggie and Milo involves a loaded subject, Milo’s former inappropriate relationship with a high school English teacher, Rich (Ty Burrell of “Modern Family”), who now lives with a girlfriend and has a son. “The Skeleton Twins” takes no stand on the affair, which haunts Milo to the degree that he seems obsessed with the still-closeted Rich, whom he looks up almost as soon as he arrives in town. Their too-brief scenes are fraught with tension and ambiguity and suggest that Milo was exploited, though he denies it.
Maggie has her own fraught sexual issues. Not in love with Lance or even strongly attracted to him, she is fair game for her Australian scuba-diving teacher (Boyd Holbrook). Secretive and weighed down by a deep sense of shame, she seems mired in a permanent funk.

What throws the glumness into sharp and welcome relief are inspired comic scenes in which Milo and Maggie regress and play together like children. Milo, who displays a streak of zany sarcasm, jokes about being “a tragic gay cliché.” When Lance announces that he and Maggie are planning to have children, Milo chimes in that he can’t wait to be “the creepy gay uncle.”

The movie transcends its mopey tendencies when the twins dress up hilariously for Halloween. And when Milo lip-syncs and cavorts to the Starship’s ’80s rock anthem “Nothing’s Gonna to Stop Us Now,” “The Skeleton Twins” soars deliriously into comic orbit.