Mark Reviews Movies: TWO OF US

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 4, 2021

Co-writer/director Filippo Meneghetti's Two of Us is about a deep, abiding love, and above all else in this film, we believe those feelings and this relationship. Two women, who met some time ago on a trip to Rome, now live across the hall from each other in separate apartments. Even though the story is set in modern times, their romantic relationship is a secret—not because of shame or guilt or fear about what society might think of it. One of them simply isn't ready to explain to her adult children that what they thought they knew about their mother, their parents' marriage, and that good friend across the hall isn't exactly as they believed.

It's a fairly simple setup—one that could be played for laughs or melodrama—that quickly becomes a study of love as an act of selflessness. The other woman, who wants her partner to be open and honest about the nature of their relationship, is put in a position in which she must tend, not only to the woman she loves, but also to a secret she wishes didn't exist.

The story, written by Meneghetti and Malysone Bovorasmy, revolves around Nina Dorn (Barbara Sukowa) and Madeleine Girard (Martine Chevallier). They spend most of their time together in Madeleine's apartment, filled with photos and knickknacks of her life as a wife to a difficult man, who has since died, and the mother to two children.

Anne (Léa Drucker), Madeleine's daughter, is attentive to her mother, believing that she lives and is alone in her later years. Frédéric (Jérôme Varanfrain), the son, shows less concern about Madeleine. He's convinced his mother had been having an affair with another man, leading Frédéric's father into some personal decline. Madeleine takes it easy on her son, because, in a way, he's a bit right about his suspicions.

All of this establishes a certain set of expectations. We watch Madeleine and Nina together, in comfort and happiness. We get an idea of Madeleine's relationship with her children and her grandson, Anne's boy with her partner (She refuses to marry, because her parents' example of marriage wasn't exactly ideal, and the daughter definitely doesn't have the same view of her father as some long-suffering victim that her brother does). With the two women retired, Nina has plans for the couple to move to Rome, where they first met. Selling their apartments would get them a nice place there, and Madeleine already has a realtor assessing her own home.

There's just one hitch in the plan: Madeleine's children don't know about her and Nina. She knows she has to tell them, and Nina insists that Madeleine does before the couple officially sets the move in motion.

The opening sections are almost exclusively seen from Madeleine's perspective—her struggle to keep her secret, her rationale for thinking that her children will react negatively to the news, her trepidation in actually saying something to them about Nina and all of the questions and difficult conversations that will arise from that. Nina learns that Madeleine has changed her mind about selling her apartment, calls her partner a coward, and leaves her alone on the street. That seems to be the beginning of the drama to come, but it isn't.

Later in the evening, Nina finds Madeleine collapsed in her kitchen. She had a stroke, and after returning from the hospital, Madeleine, barely able to move and unable to speak, is now under the watchful eyes of Anne and an at-home caregiver (played by Muriel Bénazéraf). Neither thinks Nina should trouble herself with helping her neighbor.

From here on, the film takes on Nina's point of view, and in the early scenes of Madeleine's confinement to her apartment, there's almost a sense of a farce, with Nina trying to sneak in to and out of Madeleine's place without anyone noticing, or even a very low-key thriller to what unfolds. On one level, it makes little sense that Nina simply doesn't tell the caregiver or Anne why she wants to help with Madeleine's recovery, but that's the reason this romance, hindered by the secret of it and Madeleine's condition, is as potent as it is here. Nina's selflessness is not only in the way she finds ways to care for and comfort Madeleine during this health struggle. It's also in respecting Madeleine's need to explain her relationship with Nina on her own terms—when she wants to and when she's ready—as trying and painful as that may be for Nina.

Nina does struggle, both in holding back this vital information (Sukowa's performance deftly communicates barely restrained frustration, resentment, and longing) and in the constant back-and-forth between apartments—waiting until the late hours of the night, sneaking through the halls, hiding in shadows, looking for an opportunity to show her partner even a trace of affection. Meneghetti and Bovorasmy imbue the character with a bit of dark streak, too, as she attempts to sabotage the caregiver's job, but beneath that is an aching sense of desperation. Madeleine, as we can tell from the spare nature of Nina's apartment, is her life now, and there is nothing that and no one who will stand in her way.

For all of these and the ensuing challenges and obstacles, Two of Us is a tender, compassionate film about love as a selfless act. It's not just about what one person wants. It's about knowing, understanding, and respecting what another wants and needs.

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