Two of Us Movie Storyline. Nina and Madeleine, two retired women, are secretly deeply in love for decades. From everybody’s point of view, including Madeleine’s family, they are simply neighbors living on the top floor of their building. They come and go between their two apartments, sharing the tender delights of everyday life together. Until the day their relationship is turned upside down by an unexpected event leading Madeleine’s daughter to slowly unveil the truth about them.
Two of Us (French: Deux) is a 2019 French drama film directed by Filippo Meneghetti. It was selected as the French entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards, making the shortlist of fifteen films.
Interview with the Director
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The film is centered on a couple of women in their seventies who are secretly in love. How did you get the idea to tell this story?
The inspiration for the complexity of my protagonists’ life choices and their inability to completely own them, with regard to their families, came from various people I have known, whose trajectories made a deep impression on me. For so long, I wanted to write a film about them, but I wasn’t sure of the best angle to approach it.
Then, one day, when I was about to ring a friend’s doorbell, I heard voices coming from the top floor. I went upstairs to take a look. The front doors of the two apartments up there were open, and the voices were those of two women talking to each other from their respective apartments. I lingered for a few minutes, unseen and in silence. It really was very intriguing.
Later, my friend told me that the two women were widows in their seventies, who warded off loneliness by constantly keeping their doors open and making the landing between them part of an enlarged apartment that covered the whole top floor. That triggered something in my head, and I could picture my story. My protagonists would live together in that way, hiding their romantic involvement by appearing to the world to be mere neighbors. Lots of images sprang to mind as the arrangement, which was metaphorical while also simple and routine, took shape in my brain. The project was born.
The surprising thing is that much later, when I was working on the script with my cowriter, I heard about a couple who lived almost exactly like Nina and Madeleine to conceal their relationship from their families. Life imitating art, I suppose.
So the architectural aspect was at the core of the film?
Yes, before we even started writing. The two interconnecting apartments would be the protagonists’ living space and, at the same time, a symbolic place that reflects and expresses their dealings with the outside world. In Madeleine’s apartment, every detail, every object tells the story of her family. Its coziness constantly reminds us of the burden weighing on her shoulders – the bonds around her, the chains holding her.
Nina’s apartment is more mysterious. We only see it later in the movie, just as the character gradually reveals herself. As for the landing, it is the pivotal space between the two apartments. The two front doors, which are always open initially, start to shut, turning this porous space into a kind of border.
Those images – open doors, closed doors – seemed a simple and effective metaphor for Nina’s exclusion by Madeleine’s family. And it allowed me to play with genre a little. From the start, I wanted to shoot this love story as if it were a thriller: an eye looking through a peephole, an intruder in the night… The idea was to borrow from the codes of suspense, while reinterpreting them so they sit coherently with the universe of the film.
How did you develop the characters with your actresses?
Barbara Sukowa and Martine Chevallier committed to the project at a very early stage, which allowed us to write the characters for them. I wanted Nina and Madeleine to be played by actresses who are comfortable with their age while exuding strength. I didn’t want audiences to perceive them as victims, but as heroines fighting for their love.
The film tells the story of a struggle, the story of a passion that is as obstinate as it is affectionate. But that struggle is also a way to explore issues that fascinate me. How does the gaze of others influence our acts? What inner conflict roils us when confronted with that kind of censorship? The obstacles that stand in their path sometimes lead Nina and Madeleine to extreme behavior. I didn’t want us to feel sorry for them.
Similarly, I didn’t want Anne, Madeleine’s daughter, to be seen as an oppressor. That’s why Léa Drucker was perfect for the part. She gives the character vulnerability and forces the audience to feel empathy for her. Anne is an incredibly loving daughter who always looked up to her mother as a role model. She would do anything for her, but she is rattled when she finds out that Madeleine has been living a lie. That explains the harshness of her reaction. Each character has light and dark sides.
Two of Us (2021)
Directed by: Filippo Meneghetti
Starring: Barbara Sukowa, Martine Chevallier, Léa Drucker, Jérôme Varanfrain, Muriel Bénazéraf, Augustin Reynes, Hervé Sogne. Stéphane Robles, Véronique Fauconnet, Aude-Laurence Clermont Biver
Screenplay by: Filippo Meneghettix Malysone Bovorasmy
Production Design by: Laurie Colson
Cinematography by: Aurélien Marra
Film Editing by: Julia Maby, Ronan Tronchot
Costume Design by: Magdalena Labuz
Set Decoration by: Axelle Le Dauphin
Music by: Michele Menini
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Magnolia Pictures
Release Date: February 5, 2021
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