Somewhere between Lanthimos and Korine, Edoardo De Angelis’ third feature is thriving.
Many family dramas look far and wide for handy metaphors to particularize the long-haul agony of togetherness. The death of some patriarch. The wedding of some more fortunate and departing sibling. A scary-looking avalanche. Indivisible, Edoardo De Angelis’ third feature and his first to find success on the international festival circuit, feels no need to find kitchen-sink angles to position his family on the rocks. It is a messy parable about family, growing up and letting go. It’s about the anguish of realizing that the world is a lonely and barren place, cynical and small. But I don’t want to bury my lede here. Indivisible is also the story of a pair of conjoined twins and their efforts to split.
Dasy and Viola are sisters, joined at the hip by what a doctor helpfully tells them are a “mass of capillaries.” (They are played by real-life twin siblings, Angela and Marianna Fontana.) Their parents, either making the best of things or playing the part of exploitive carnies, put them on the touring circuit. Small church parties, convocations, weddings. It is nothing excessively egregious: the sisters can also sing remarkably well, so it’s not a total old-school freak show. We’re supposed to think the parents are the story’s villains but their performances ring too true for that script. Titti the mother (Antonia Truppo, often in a flaming green jacket that looks like a fragrant lily pad against the film’s damp mise-en-scène) is particularly affecting in her anguish: “You don’t want them separated because they could die on the operating table. You love them and worry about them,” she tells her husband Peppe (Massimiliano Rossi) and it’s that dramaturgical touch of lying to yourself that she works especially well. Rossi, on the other hand, attacks his role like the story’s Rasputin, evoking the similarly sinister patriarchs of Yorgos Lanthimos’ earlier and equally physical dramas. Most egregious: he forbids them from singing the Janis Joplin songs they love in lieu of his own tedious verses. Lanthimos also feels like a clear influence of sorts, with family affairs like Dogtooth and Alps that are similarly keen on beating out the metaphorical power of diligently surreal situations.
