Twin Cities is a 2018 drama about a computer programmer who discovers he has a terminal illness and must race against time to save his marriage and make amends for a squandered life.
Romance on the edge of breakdown is a sort of endless fascination in movies, the meet cute to tragic demise a journey many find a bit of solace in while taking in a flick simply because most of us can connect. What do you do when it all starts to fall apart? Writer/director David Ash‘s complicated couple on the rocks drama Twin Cities explores the possibilities but does so in some unexpected ways, and while there are flaws in the mix, manages to stitch together a juicy little entanglement of love, death, and all things brain bending, and it’s with that last smart stinger where I got hooked.
In non-linear fashion, we meet John (Clarence Wethern) and Emily (Bethany Ford), a married couple who are not exactly as happy as they once were. He’s a computer programmer and she’s an author, her first book a modest success that led to a big advance on a second, though she’s spent the money and now has writer’s block of sorts. She’s also very pregnant. The two are basically roommates, barely speaking (she uses Post-it Notes to communicate), which makes sharing the same space uncomfortable. Then, the worst news. John gets cancer and it’s terminal. Now what?
Basically a second story to Ash’s 2013 drama 2021, with Wethern and Ford returning as the same characters, Twin Cities is a curious tale, sometimes darkly humorous but also with a solid twist. John is already a little cynical and abstract, but when he get the diagnosis, takes it on the chin and just smiles, treating the cancer like a wee joke that frees him to drop most of his social filters. He decides not to tell anyone (except for Emily) and makes a list of people he wants to have some deep conversations with, hoping to heal some of his past, including his parents. He then commits to salvaging his marriage, though neither will be easy. But who is healing whom?
It’s a little hard initially to get behind John’s cavalier attitude as he begins his personal odyssey to find himself and make amends, looking for answers in religion and support groups. He cracks jokes and rips one liners that don’t quite feel right given the tone of the film, but it’s clearly a stepping stone in his acceptance of what is about to happen. Right? Or is it?
About an hour in everything changes, and I won’t dare hint to what, only that it’s shocking but somehow makes sense in a weird trippy existential fashion. Coming into the story is David (Peter Christian Hansen), who plays a significant part in the second half, where we have to sort of realign what we think is going on. Part of the success of Ash’s script and direction is his trust in the audience, something so few filmmakers tend to have, skipping about the timeline without a single onscreen cue to where we are in the lives of these characters, simply playing them out with visual and dialogue hints that work as landmarks to keep us on the right path. It’s a juggling act that for the most part, strikes with intent.
Twin Cities is a heartbreaker for sure, but not always for the reasons you expect, building to a traumatic confession that pulls the rug out from under us even as the signposts are there if we’re paying attention. It’s heavy and even a little impenetrable but makes for a genuinely provocative experience that will surely challenge viewers, and that is something too few films do.
Twin Cities is now available on Amazon Prime