Much was made after the premiere of James Sweeney’s second feature, Twinless, of a steamy sex scene between his and Dylan O’Brien’s characters. Fans of the former Teen Wolf star took advantage of the film’s (short-lived) online availability to rip the scene and post it widely, giddy that their favorite heartthrob was going gay. The film’s sales agent quickly removed it from Sundance’s virtual platform. Other distributors, spooked by the seemingly sudden vulnerability of their own titles, followed suit. A sour taste accompanied the final days of the festival. This incident is only relevant to discussions about Twinless as a film insofar as it brings up questions of trust — of what people expect, and often take, from others; of what is given freely at first, and the price paid down the road.
A group counseling session for grieving twins isn’t the logical place for a meet-cute, but the quick-witted graphic designer Dennis (Sweeney) and mumbly, working class Roman (O’Brien) aren’t logical companions. They at least bond over the terrible cookies on offer after the awkward meeting, and ponder the quirky traits — from car-sickness to homosexuality — twins inherit on top of their DNA. Roman, whose twin, Rocky, was gay, wonders whether there actually is a gay gene. Dennis’ eyes briefly flash at the unexpected frankness of this first conversation. The gesture is funnier than it needs to be, and over as quickly as it begins. But you know immediately these two people need each other, that each has something to offer the other, and that they’re willing to give it freely.
In Sweeney’s feature debut, Straight Up, his character’s fear of dying alone prompts a series of mental gymnastics by which he convinces himself he might not actually be gay. Dennis performs similar feats of dexterity in Twinless, which advances Sweeney’s preoccupations with articulate but largely ineffectual characters with superiority complexes and nagging pangs of loneliness. Both films at least go some way to prove the so-called Male Loneliness Epidemic doesn’t just afflict sex-starved straight men or manifest exclusively in online discourse. In Twinless especially, the feelings of isolation inherent to many aspects of 21st century life are woven into a comedy of manners and grief.
The meticulous layers of verbal and formal artifice that defined Straight Up don’t act so much as a barrier to vulnerability in Twinless, but an invitation toward it. Dennis and Roman’s casual hang-outs turn into late-night grocery runs, and weekend trips to hockey games turn into genuine emotional devotion. They go to a Halloween party together dressed as characters from The Sims, a game Roman played with Rocky when they were kids and through which he fantasized about how their future life as brothers might look. Through their friendship, these formerly closed-off people gradually open themselves up to each other and to themselves. They become the siblings they lost. But Sweeney, who, for lack of a better term, rarely plays things straight, has other motives, and soon Dennis not only relies upon Roman’s company, but expects it.
Sweeney carefully feeds the viewer information about Dennis’ past that reveals the murky ethical lines he draws in moments of desperation. This information isn’t worth spoiling, not just for the narrative, but in the ways Sweeney, always a visually inventive filmmaker, expresses them. There’s a weighty satisfaction to the film’s fractured narrative structure, where truth and fiction are meted out just as judiciously as humor and drama; and this is an incredibly funny film, quick-witted and just ironic enough to support a core of sincerity. What Sweeney does with his eyes in the early scene after the counseling session is just one example, where a flash of his characters’ intellectual superiority and genuine surprise acts as both a moment of relatability and a secret revelation of his deviousness.
Twinless pushes the limits of Sweeney’s dramatic chops farther than they should be pushed. Some key emotional crests, like the film’s hotel-set climax, crumble momentarily because his performance can’t quite rise to the occasion. His stuttering and blubbering have a self-conscious quality that makes the viewer aware of the emotional arithmetic inherent to every pause and repetition. But Sweeney’s self-awareness also makes Twinless an exceptionally generous film. He is not precious about making his character look like an unmitigated ass, especially in his dealings with women. Look at his treatment of Marcie (Aisling Franciosi), Dennis’ hyper-cheerful co-worker, for whose ever-present and unrelenting positivity Dennis has nothing but contempt. Nevertheless, her smile bears a complex and thorough narrative arc in Twinless that a lesser film might not have bothered with after its initial comedic setup. It takes a director and actor as conscious of his own character-type’s function to let someone as specific as Marcie flourish.
But Twinless is just as much Dylan O’Brien’s film as Sweeney’s. He embodies two extremes in Roman and Rocky: a straight man almost too repressed by grief to function, and a gay man almost too charming to be real. O’Brien makes light work of the job in scenes that maneuver effortlessly through disparate emotional registers — the swing in tenor between the early sex scene and another of sincere confession is a bright spot in the film. Like Sweeney, but not to the same degree, there are times when O’Brien reaches his limits of dramatic expression, but he bounces back more often than not, and anchors the film with a sense of warmth and unspoiled sincerity that contrasts effectively against Dennis’ cynicism. They might not be twins, but the pair make for a memorable, winning cinematic duo.
DIRECTOR: James Sweeney; CAST: Dylan O’Brien, James Sweeney, Aisling Franciosi, Lauren Graham; DISTRIBUTOR: Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions; IN THEATERS: September 5; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 40 min.
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