Magdalena and Maria are two twin sisters who were separated at birth and know nothing of the other’s existence. &Maria runs away from the boarding school in which she was brought up and finds work as a cabaret performer in the cafés of Marseilles. &Magdalena lives with her adopted parents and works in an art gallery. &The two sisters are joined by an invisible bond which draws them towards the same tragic conclusion.
Director Werner Schroeter has acquired a reputation as an experimentalist filmmaker, hailed by some as an underrated genius, reviled by others for being a peddler of self-indulgent kitsch. &Deux is arguably Schroeter’s most ambitious, unsettling and repulsive work to date. &The director certainly wastes no time in alienating his audience; from the first ten minutes of the film it is clear this is not going to be an easy ride. &The narrative cuts haphazardly between seemingly unconnected events, alternating between realism and stylised fantasy dream sequences, periodically shocking the spectator with graphic images of lesbian sex and a woman being slowly disembowelled. &Having several actors playing multiple parts only adds to the sense of artifice and utter confusion, which is a pity as there is manifestly a lot of great acting talent on show – not least of which is Isabelle Huppert. &The film’s sheer relentless grotesqueness and self-indulgence is so extreme, so unbridled, so stomach-churningly provocative, that it is hard to take any of it seriously.
