The delicious fusion of sweetness and sorrow

My sister. I need to see my sister!”

The thought keeps coming back at me as I watch The Skeleton Twins. I laugh a lot, I cry even more and I keep thinking about my sister who lives 700 km away, the one I only see a couple of times a year, the one that is too busy making a career and raising three children to have time for me.

Sister, do you hear me? For a moment I think she does before I remember that we’re both rational people who don’t believe in such things.

Sister, let’s run away, let’s get into a fight, let’s get drunk, let’s make up, let’s talk all night about our dirtiest secrets and let’s hug up together in the darkness, as if we were the last people on Earth, waiting for the stars to devour us!

I guess most people love their siblings. But when you come from a family that has been dysfunctional in generations, that has weirdness tattooed into its DNA, there’s another dimension to it. There is another person out there who you don’t need to explain the unexplainable to because they already know. No matter how many years that will pass, no matter what different orbits your life choices will toss you into, you’ve got that rubber band between you that can bring you together again, if needed from opposite sides of the universe.

Onion peeling
The Skeleton Twins is a movie about a pair of twins who meet again after not seeing each other for many years. They’re both in a rather miserable shape, but it takes some time before they start acknowledging it in front of each other and to themselves. It’s a case of onion peeling, where layer after layer is exposed. The first one is pretty hard to get through and then we pull them off one after each other, tears falling as we go, until we reach the soft, sweet core, where all pretence and all lies are gone.

This makes this movie sound unbearably sad, so I need to say right away that it’s not. It is definitely deliciously melancholic and touching, but it’s also very funny. As I mentioned before I did laugh a lot, considering how grumpy I am about comedy in movies, that’s quite an achievement.

It reminds me a little of my reaction to another movie a few years ago, Beginners, which I fell in love with right away. It plays in the same genre: movies that make you feel good and bad at the same time, with a strong indie vibe. I know there are people out there who can’t stand that kind of films people who hate quirkiness with the same ferocity as others hate Michael Bay movies. If you know that you’re one of those people, this is probably not for you. But if you’re a fan of the genre, watch it, cry, laugh and enjoy this delicious fusion of sweetness and sorrow. And then go home and give your sister or brother a call straight away.

The Skeleton Twins (Craig Johnson, US 2014) My rating: 5/5