Words by JANE CROWTHER
Werner Herzog begins his whimsical, empathic and quirky tale of two sisters living in enmeshment by dedicating it to the memory of David Lynch. Lynch would no doubt dig a film that is proudly unconventional and opaque to a degree that will likely be marmite to viewers. It opens with an Irish court hearing to bring a restraining order against Jean and Joan Holbrooke (Rooney and Kate Mara) for harassing a man they love (Orlando Bloom), before following the duo through their synchonised sibling existence as they seek romance and a sense of belonging by digging a tunnel through a mountain, adopting a fox and interacting with a wide range of men who want to protect/exploit them. The title of the piece is the accidental Spoonerism the sisters blurt out during their court proceedings, the real-life response of British twin sisters, Freda and Greta Chaplin, who Herzog met during the 1980s.
Though the Chaplins are the inspiration for the film (and the Maras are dressed in their idiosyncratic head scarfs and coats) Herzog uses the idea of them as a jumping-off point to explore identity, co-dependency, infatuation and the noble art of a quest. Jeanie and Joanie are so entwined that they speak and dress in unison, perform acts as a single person and view the world entirely through a lens only they share. That lack of outside context means they love fiercely and inappropriately when they fall for their neighbour who relishes a ‘cowgirl’ threesome but gets married to another woman. The impotence the women feel from his ghosting leads to criminal behaviour and the beginning of a court-ordered banishment which takes them to a city apartment where men spy on them, want selfies with them and, in the case of Domhnall Gleeson’s sweet social worker Timothy, try to integrate them into modern life. In a couple of the film’s more amusing moments Timothy stops them scrapping as they duo hoover and get wedged between chairs, and tries to get them to act independently while opening a sardine can. But ultimately, the sisters do not wish to change (‘we are we’ they say plaintively) and their hope for love that matches their own unique viewpoint takes them to the countryside of Sligo and a cave where they single-mindedly chip away at the rock and their life purpose to find some sort of epiphany.
Unspooling in a timeless, reality-adjacent bubble where the Holbrookes are inexplicably American in an Irish world, the Internet exists but people who come in contact with them are unphased by their otherness and foxes are gassed as rabies carriers, Bucking Fastards is a series of vignettes that meaning may be read into. The sisters are fastidious about the type of buttons they put on their coats and interact with a patient haberdasher, a sheep farmer takes them to some local caves and gets them obsessed with the isle of Orkney, they bury all their clothes in the garden because…well, because. That might intrigue or frustrate depending on a tolerance for the willfully oblique.
But what is mesmerising by any measure is the performance of the Maras as a fused child-like persona, their thoughts tumbling from their mouths in harmony like a wide-eyed Greek chorus and the secret looks between them given extra resonance by their off-screen relationship. Herzog’s fable is meandering and provides no easy answers, but it does give great fox (a non-CG critter called Cupid) and enough quirks to be engaging without ostensibly having very much to say.
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Images courtesy of HANWAY FILMS
Bucking Fastard premiered at the 83rd Venice Film Festival