Nina Hoss and Lars Eidinger give finely acted performances as they play twins brought back together through illness – but who is saving who?
Fine performances are at the heart of this film from Swiss writer-directors Véronique Reymond and Stéphanie Chuat, which rather resembles a classy television drama that might, in
British terrestrial terms, be spread over three successive Sundays.
Nina Hoss plays Lisa, an author and dramatist suffering from an emotional and professional block. Her life is on hold because her beloved twin brother Sven (Lars Eidinger), a celebrated classical stage
Actor in
Berlin, has
cancer, though he is now in remission due to the bone marrow transplant which she has been able to give him. Lisa comes to the clinic to bring him back temporarily to the chaotic family apartment in the city where their widowed mother Kathy (Marthe Keller) lives. The film’s original title is Schwesterlein and when we first see Sven he is sitting on the hospital bed with his headphones on, listening to Brahms’s song: “Schwesterlein, Schwesterlein, wann gehn wir nach Haus?” (“Little sister, little sister, when are we going home?”)