Based on a bestselling Dutch novel by Tessa de Loo, this Euro-pap tale of two sisters plays like a Danielle Steele sob story. Separated at birth, twins Anna (Nadja Uhl) and Lotte (Thekla Reuten) lose touch. Years pass, Hitler comes to power and when they finally meet again, Anna's a card-carrying Nazi with a hubby in the SS and Lotte's hitched to a Jew earmarked for Buchenwald. Hello irony, goodbye subtlety.
Chocolate-box visuals and a pair of solid performances give this melodrama a pretty sheen, which goes some way to explaining its foreign-flick Oscar nom in 2004. That and an Academy-friendly, reality-averse dip into sickly sentiment that will have you reaching for the hurl pail in the final act.
Showing a dismaying willingness to whitewash Holocaust history and fudging issues of blame and responsibility for Nazi atrocities, Twin Sisters is dismayingly facile.
