Avant-garde is 50-yo Isabelle Huppert playing twin sisters in their infancy, adolescence and youth, each one embodying different aspects of Schroeter’s persona, considering that Deux is an autobiographical fantasy, though it may also be viewed as an idiosyncratic, brutally puzzling spiritual sequel to The Double Life of Véronique. Provocation is the siblings’ very names, Maria and Magdalena, one a lesbian opera singer in coastal Portugal, the other living a peaceful life with a fox pet in France, and being obsessed with a serial killer who leaves a tell-tale rose on his victims’ bodies. Their mother is portrayed by Bulle Ogier who at one point almost gets gangbanged by a group of naked men, whereas Maria’s solfeggio teacher (and the Djinn) is Arielle Dombasle – their names certainly ring the bells of the arthouse crowd.
The past, the present and the future exist all at once, and the space is abolished, as Imagined penetrates Real and vice versa, fiercely and continuously, making the narrative so fragmented that one can’t help but simply surrender to the stream-of-conscious-and-subconscious imagery hectically sewn with cryptic dialogues, arias and Schlager tunes. A fascinatingly frustrating fever dream of an experience or rather, a hard-hitting wallop of creative madness, Deux will pose a challenge not only for the most dedicated fans of always reliable Huppert, but also for the viewers familiar with the filmmaker’s freewheeling approach to cinema, so it goes without saying that the ‘acquired taste’ label has to be applied more than once, and in bold, preferably capital letters.
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