Werner Herzog’s latest film begins with a dedication to David Lynch, and though it becomes more and more unmoored from reality as time goes by, the film it most resembles is perhaps Lynch’s most traditional, The Straight Story. While it is anything but straight in its trajectory, just as it takes massive liberties with the true story of identical British twins Freda and Greta Chaplin, Bucking Fastard is a strangely tender portrait of two women trying, and failing, to find their place in life. And though it appears to start with a tone of gentle mockery, Herzog’s picaresque yarn soon finds a surprising seam of compassion for the two sisters, whose idiosyncrasies walk the fine line between eccentric and irritating.
Kate and Rooney Mara star as Jean and Joan Holbrooke, two sisters who dress the same, sort of look the same, and often say the same things at the same time. This we learn in the opening scenes, which find them in court as the defendants in a highly unusual court case. “What I am planning to do is has no precedent,” says the judge, calling the two women to the witness box at the same time. Sitting opposite them is the complainant, Gareth Mulroney (Orlando Bloom), their recently married neighbor, who is taking out a restraining order against them after a playful fling led to escalating acts of harassment, from “making noises like in porn movies” outside his bedroom to setting fire to his car.
In flashback, a disheveled Mulroney makes his entrance by bursting into the local church with a pint of lager in his hand, yelling, “I haven’t come for the Lord, I’ve come to milk the devil.” The sisters are smitten and invite him to their shed, where the first of several hook-ups will begin. “It was only sexual,” says Mulroney. “It was love,” say the sisters. “They rode me well,” he says. “He was the joy in our lives,” the sisters reply.
Surprisingly, this is all we see of Mulroney and the court case. While setting fire to the local post box to prevent Mulroney from sending love letters to his wife Gladys (bizarre in itself since she lives with him, at his home), the sisters meet Mr. Westmoreland, another, more kindly neighbor, who offers them use of his flat in the center of town. Mr. Westmoreland admits to being worried for the girls, who have no idea that have become something of an internet sensation after the court case, and gets the help of a social worker, Timothy (Domhnall Gleeson), a reformed drug addict who tries to break the women’s co-dependency.
From this point, the story seems to go wherever the wind takes it, and the central conceit of two women trying to be one does lead to some funny situations, notably involving a vacuum cleaner and a tin of sardines. Herzog has fun with all that, but he draws the line at making fun of the pair themselves, indulging the women in their blind pursuit of love. There’s a deeply sad scene in which they appear, unwanted, as bridesmaids at a wedding, and another when they visit their old family home in Tullamore, and we see their parents pretending to be out.
Meanwhile, their notoriety grows when nude images of the women getting ready for bed appear on the internet, which they refuse to accept (“There cannot be pictures on the internet,” they reason, “because we do not have the internet”). The two Maras, the subtly expressive Rooney in particular, have a great natural instinct for surreal, deadpan comedy, which comes out when Timothy tries to persuade them to get out more. He suggests the cinema, but the women shudder. “Too many people we don’t know — and it’s all dark.” How about going out for a meal? “There are all these waiters…”
The scenery changes yet again with a letter from Auntie Louise, who invites the sisters to the countryside, where they become obsessed with digging a tunnel to the Orkney islands and may inspire some viewers to do the same. The last half hour is certainly the weakest, and one gets the sense that Herzog is making it up as he goes along, culminating in climax riffing on his 2010 doc Cave of Forgotten Dreams. But there’s something quite sweet and generous at work beneath the stylized strangeness, a tone that Herzog has never really struck before in his fiction work, with the possible exception of 2019’s Family Romance LLC. “There must be a place for us somewhere,” say the girls, and Herzog, ever the Bavarian humanitarian, does his best to help them find it.
Title: Bucking FastardFestival: Venice (Competition)Director: Werner HerzogScreenwriters: Werner HerzogCast: Kate Mara, Rooney Mara, Orlando Bloom, Domhnall GleesonWorld sales: HanwayRunning time: 1 hr 49 mins
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