BUCKING FASTARD Luminaries

Werner Herzog’s singular new film takes inspiration from the extraordinary real-life story of British sisters Freda and Greta Chaplin, twins whose unusual bond and shared life became the subject of public fascination in the 1980s. Herzog reshapes their story into an eccentric, darkly comic fairy tale about Jean and Joan Holbrooke (Kate Mara and Rooney Mara), sisters whose connection seems to extend beyond ordinary intimacy: they speak, move, dress, dream — and at times appear to think — in perfect synchrony. The film begins amid courtroom proceedings before opening into a succession of increasingly improbable episodes involving romantic obsession, scandal, isolation and a disastrous relationship with their neighbor (Orlando Bloom). As Jean and Joan retreat further from the conventions of ordinary society, their shared fantasy takes them toward an audacious quest involving a mountain tunnel and the remote Orkney Islands. The Mara sisters’ remarkable performances – their first together – make their characters’ uncanny unity both humorous and affecting, turning mundane routines into precisely choreographed expressions of an almost inseparable bond. With dreamy cinematography by longtime Herzog collaborator Peter Zeitlinger, BUCKING FASTARD moves fluidly between the everyday and the fantastically surreal as the film becomes unmistakably Herzogian: a strange, tender and searching portrait of people who refuse to accept the limits of the world as given.