Parky At the Pictures (6/2/2026)

(Reviews of Twinless; The Chronology of Water; and 100 Nights of Hero)

TWINLESS.

There was clearly something in the air during 2025, as there were an inordinate number of films about bereavement and grief. Following David Cronenberg's The Shrouds, we had Courtney Stephens's Invention, Jaume Collet-Serra's The Woman in the Yard, Alessandro Antonaci, Daniel Lascar, and Stefano Mandalà's The Grieving, Julia Max's The Surrender, Nico Santucci's Sarogeto. Dylan Southern's The Thing With Feathers, and, of course, Chloé Zhao's Hamnet. Spilling over into this year, James Sweeney's Twinless puts a dark comic spin on the subject, with the director casting himself as the decidedly unsympathetic antagonist.

When his identical brother Rocky dies, Roman (Dylan O'Brien) moves into his apartment in Portland, Oregon. At a support group for grieving twins, Roman meets Dennis (James Sweeney), a gay man who helps Roman settle in and get used to the idea that people occasionally mistake him for the outgoing and intelligent sibling who was his diametric opposite. At one session, Roman is moved when Dennis admits to being responsible for brother Dean's death because he nagged him into breaking the speed limit to collect him from the airport. He also recalls the number of times his twin bailed him out as a kid and accepts the pain he feels at his loss, because it helps him feel close.

After a silent credit sequence, we see Dennis being picked up from a sandwich shop by the moustachioed Rocky, who takes him home for vigorous sex and pillow-talked confidences about Dennis's obsession with twins, which was derived from his conviction that he was separated from his brother at birth. However, Rocky fails to return calls and is killed by a car when Dennis follows him and confronts him on the street. Distraught, he had attended the funeral in a wig and had followed Roman to the group session and pretended to be a bereaved twin in order to speak to him.

When they bump into George (Chris Perfetti), who had been with Rocky when he died, Dennis pretends to be a Brit named Rupert after hearing what Roman would do to the person who had caused his brother's death. They go to Seattle for an ice hockey game and Dennis is shocked when Roman beats up three guys who had made a homophobic remark. Back in the hotel, he offers to be Rocky so that Roman can make his peace and he sobs in apologising for driving his sibling away from home in Moscow, Idaho with his insensitive response to him coming out. He admits that he isn't sure how to be himself without his twin, as he had always wanted to be so like him - and Dennis understands how damaged and vulnerable Roman is, but he can't come clean about his deception.

Dennis invites Roman to a Halloween party thrown by his co-worker, Marcie (Aisling Franciosi), where they run into Sammy (François Arnaud), a gay man from the gym who Roman thinks is perfect for Dennis. The screen splits, as Dennis listens to Sammy talking about extreme sports, while Roman meets Marcie while getting a drink. He tells her about playing The Sims with his twin and Dennis stares from the stairwell in horror, as he realises he has introduced Roman to the soulmate he has been searching for.

Hoping to nip a romance in the bud, he suggests a double date, only for Marcie and Roman to get on like a house on fire, while he has to fend off George's conviction that they have met before. He tags along when Marcie and Roman visit the Hopscotch immersive art show and feigns a panic attack in a mirrored gallery when she queries his claim to have lost a twin and Roman feels so sorry for him that he invites him to spend Christmas with his mother, Lisa (Lauren Graham), although he is glad to have a buffer because they don't get along. They still argue furiously, although Dennis sees her pain when she finds him snooping in Rocky's room when Roman and Marcie (who is becoming increasingly suspicious about Dennis and his backstory) are out for a walk.

Back in Portland, Marcie gives Dennis an ultimatum to come clean and he chooses to do so during another hockey weekend. Roman is confused and beats Dennis in his fury before storming out to find Marcie. She calls Dennis when he fails to come to work - he's home watching Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in It Takes Two (1995) - and she wishes him well, even though she's been asked to ignore him. Marcie moves in with Roman, but refuses to tolerate his temper flares or his impatience to have her attention. Feeling frustrated, he contacts Dennis (whose self-esteem has been further bruised during a solo return to the twin group) and they meet at the sandwich shop where Rocky had picked him up. He tells Roman that his brother had called him `the good twin' and he takes comfort from this, even though he knows the friendship can't continue. A waitress asks if they want anything and they simultaneously request a `to go' box, which was what Rocky always asked for when he ate out.

Building significantly on the decent impression made with his 2019 debut, Straight Up, James Sweeney scores as writer, director, and actor in this bleakly witty, but deftly insightful study into grief, anger, anxiety, self-worth, and loneliness. Going on a limb with some potentially sensitive issues, he finds humour in mournful situations and owns the risk by playing the edgiest character himself. Moreover, he also comes up with some splendid sequences, with the use of a split screen and dipped sound during the Halloween party being inspired. The utilisation of the light displays at Hopscotch reinforces the visual dynamism, as Dennis feels himself losing control of his fantasy against a backdrop of illuminated mirrors and shifting kaleidoscopes.

Dennis would be irredemable were he not so pregnable to both the taunts and judgements of others and his own dreams and desires. But despair and isolation have also made him so defensive and self-obsessed that he becomes careless with details, as jealousy turns his wit bitter and his neediness into nastiness. In truth, Sweeney lets Dennis off the hook rather easily, but one isn't left entirely convinced that he's learned his lesson - or that Roman will be able to control his imperfections and keep hold of Marcie.

She is delightfully played by Aisling Franciosi, the seemingly ditzy receptionist who understands Dennis, boss Sage (Susan Park), and Roman better than they know themselves. Her final scene, in which she admonishes a sulky boyfriend while poring over a jigsaw is neatly done, as is the way in which Dylan O'Brien creates contrasting twins whose differences stretch far beyond a soup-strainer moustache. College boy Rocky bristles with a confidence that makes him cat nip to Dennis, who can't resist correcting the little slips that pepper the stay-at-home Roman's gauche conversation (although he's articulate enough when bawling at his mother and conversing with Dennis-as-Rocky).

With the Roman/Marcie romance never quite ringing true (she's far too good for him), it's not quite clear how things will pan out at the end. Sadly, it's unlikely we'll ever get to catch up with this mismatched trio, as Twinless isn't the kind of picture that gets a sequel, in spite of the excellence of its script, direction, acting, cinematography (Greg Cotten), editing (Nik Boyanov), costume design (Erin Orr), score (Jung Jae-il), and indie pop jukebox selections.

THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER.

Curiously, it's still something of an event when an actress directs a feature film. Opportunities were so limited during the Golden Age of Hollywood that only Ida Lupino managed to direct with any frequency. Yet she paved the way for the likes of Lee Grant, Barbra Steisand, Elaine May, and Penny Marshall, who emerged during early blockbuster era. Subsequently, superstars like Jodie Foster and Angelina Jolie have made occasional pictures, although more interesting work has come from such mid-ranking stars as Sarah Polley, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Greta Gerwig, Olivia Wilde, and Elizabeth Banks. Now, joining their number is Kristen Stewart, who follows her bold neural style transfer short, Come Swim (2017), with her feature bow, The Chronology of Water.

In a blur of images flashing between timeframes with a whispered voiceover, we learn that, in 1970s San Francisco, Lidia Yuknavitch was abused by her architect father, Mike (Michael Epp), as a young child (Angelika Mihailova), as a girl (Anna Wittowsky), and as a teenager (Imogen Poots). Her mother, Dorothy (Susannah Flood), was an alcoholic who was powerless to prevent her husband from controlling every aspect of Lidia's life, apart from her close relationship with her older sister, Claudia (Thora Birch), who has her draw shapes in the soap foam on her back in the bathtub. At school, Lidia discovers a talent for swimming, as she finds peace in the water, but her failure to win a full scholarship gives Mike the excuse to bar her from going to university.

Lidia is spotted by a coach from a Texan technical college and she defies her father, while sneaking out in the middle of the night (`Fuck you, motherfucker!'), to take up her place. Revelling in the freedom afforded by student life, Lidia parties hard. But the drink, drugs, and one-night stands bring little solace and she drifts towards Philip (Earl Cave), a guitar-strumming loner, whose passivity she seeks to shatter through taunts and rages. They marry and Lidia become pregant and punches Philip on the nose when he agrees to support her if she wishes to keep the baby. Infuriated by how nice he is, she thinks back to the time her father raped Claudia (Marlena Sniega) during a family expedition to chop down a Christmas tree and Lidia remembers how her mother had said nothing when her sister had returned to the car empty-handed and in silent shock.

Lidia decides to leave Philip and come home to raise the child with the help of Claudia and her husband. They laugh at how Claudia had been playfully mean to the sibling who had idolised her, but Claudia feels bad that she had failed to protect her. She is equally distressed when her daughter is stillborn and Lidia comments bemusedly about her pink lips, as she cradles the little bundle, whose ashes she wades into the sea to scatter. As Claudia watches on, Lidia gets the giggles with Philip, when he notices that the ashes have stuck to her coat and they hug because they know that this means goodbye.

Claire (Esmé Creed-Miles) coaxes Lidia into joining One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest author , Ken Kesey (Jim Belushi), in an experimental novel-writing workshop in Eugene, Oregon. He knows about her child and tells her about the pain he felt after losing his son. She feels inspired to write about how her father went from being a small boy and a man she had loved to being a manipulative predator and can feel the cathartic effect of expressing her truth. Mike attends the reading of Caverns and Lidia pauses at the miscrophone when she sees him on the front row. When he comes to meet Kesey on the stage, he feels uneasy, as the author signs a copy with `Be Brave', and Lidia feels free of her father's tyranny. Sadly, however, she never saw Kesey again after he gave her a rock for her collection on the last night of the camp.

However, she now feels ready to become a writer, although she struggles to convince editors to accept her work. She goes on a getaway weekend with Claire and another woman that involves lots of sex before Claire takes her leave. Lidia becomes involved with an older female photographer (Kim Gordon) who ties and whips her before meeting Devin (Tom Sturridge). They marry, but he makes demands when she would rather be writing. Nevertheless, she publishes her first collection of stories and, having won an award from Poets & Writers Magazine, she is invited to give a reading. Norton editor, Carol Houck Smith (Eleanor Hahn), is impressed by the text (in which she details her father's collapse on a beach) and asks if Lidia has more material. Some time afterwards, however, she is arrested for causing an accident while drunk and does community service. However, she winds up teaching an English course and meets film-maker, Andy Mingo (Charlie Carrick), who lends her his spare car. They marry and have a child, who worries that he will get water on the brain through swimming. Lidia ducks down to reassure him and he suggests they bob underwater and look at each other - `In water, like in books, you can leave your life.'

This quaintly optimistic scene brings to a close a fierce film that makes no compromises in seeking to disorientate and disturb. Stewart spent eight years trying to put the project together after convincing Yuknavitch that she was the only person who could do justice to her 2011 memoir. As she had based her novel, Dora: A Headcase, on Stewart, there was never any danger that anyone else was going to be entrusted with the deeply personal material. But no one could have expected that Stewart would find such innovative, intimate, and invasive ways to convey what Yuknavitch once

called `the mass of chaotic images we call memory'.

Despite cannily leaving much of the abuse off screen, Stewart is excellently served by cinematographer, Corey C. Waters, who films faces in extreme 16mm close-up to that no flicker of emotion can go unseen. However, the performances are superbly controlled (apart from some mubling delivery, particularly on the narrative track), while Olivia Neergaard-Holm's editing is a miracle of fragment assembly, as Stewart strives to convey fleeting snippets of remembrance, angst, humiliation, and shame, as Lidia struggles to cope with the childhood traumas that sometimes sneak into her masturbatory fantasies. The effect is mostly potent, but it can also occasionally be bewildering and more than a little self-consciously punk poetic and audaciously artistic.

The screenplay is unrepentantly challenging, as it tosses in references to tomes like Vita Sackville-West's Joan of Arc, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, and Kathy Acker's Empire of the Senseless to reinforce Stewart's literary credentials, as much as to clue us as to Yuknavitch's influences. Indeed, Stewart strives hard to demonstrate that she is not just an actress behind the camera, but a cine-artist with something valid and vital to say. In an interview, she declared her film to be `about the gouging out of desire, and the reframing of that, and how empowered that is'. This is a recklessly ambitious theme and Stewart is able to do it justice, thanks to the courageous performance of Imogen Poots, who keeps producing work of arresting originality and power.

Many have lauded the picture for its terrifying power of suggestion, for its marginalising of the male characters, and for its structural chutzpah. Yet, there is a thread of linearity here, as Yuknavitch pursues her education, finds her voice, and marries her husbands. Granted, the action is strewn with memory flashes and elusive metaphors. but the storytelling itself is actually rather conventional, albeit without excess exposition or explanation. It's the framing where the novelty lies and it will be intriguing to see how Stewart's style develops over time and how she might fare without someone like Poots to bring some heart to her raw energy and creative fury.

100 NIGHTS OF HERO.

UK-based Canadian film-maker Julia Jackman claims she would have waited forever if she had only made her second feature when she was ready. Her debut short, Emma, Change the Locks (2015), starred Olivia Williams and won a New Talent Award at the BFI's Future Film Festival. It was followed by Kid Gloves (2016), Sparta North (2017), 23 Red (2018), James, Upshot (both 2019), The Riley Sisters (2022), and Pigs (2024) before Jackman made her feature bow with Bonus Track (2023), which was based on a story co-written by Josh O'Connor. Now, she has seized the moment to produce her long-gestating adaptation of Isabel Greenberg's 2016 graphic novel, 100 Nights of Hero, which goes on general release having been the closing night selection at the 69th BFI London Film Festival.

An unseen narrator (Felicity Jones) explains how a goddess named kiddo (Safia Oakley-Green) created a world of humans, who were encouraged to live on their own terms. However, her father, Birdman (Richard E. Grant), couldn't abide the fact that the humans had nothing to do but love and procreate. So, he went back on his promise not to interfere, and imposed a series of strict rules that reinforced the cult worship of himself and the hegemony of the male of the species. As a result of his meddling, women were compelled to marry and bear sons. But Agnes (Markella Kavenagh) was already pregnant when she was whisked into a match and the narrator assures us that, 27 years later, her daughter, Hero (Emma Corrin), would change the world.

She is the maid and `best friend' of Cherry (Maika Monroe), who has been brought before Beaked Brother Charles (Christopher Fairbank) for having failed to produce an heir for her husband, Jerome (Amir El-Masry). She is given 101 days to become pregnant or pay the ultimate penalty, which seems harsh, as Jerome has shown no signs of wishing to consummate their union. Aware the clock is ticking, he agrees a wager with his friend, Manfred (Nicholas Galitzine), who has just lost his home after his wife was executed for adultery. He claims to know people who have children going spare and Jerome is sufficiently intrigued to manufacture a business trip to leave the dashing Manfred with the virginal Cherry in the hope that he will seduce her and solve his heir problem. However, he protests that his wife is so virtuous that she would resist his advances and offers to give up his castle and all its contents if Manfred is successful in his endeavour.

Discomfited by her spouse's sudden exit and unsure she can trust her charming guest after a nocturnal guided tour of the house ends with a request to see inside her bedroom, Cherry asks Hero for help. She promises to spin a yarn whenever her mistress needs a distraction and she soon finds herself dipping into The Story of the Dancing Stones to introduce Mina (Kerena Jagpal), Catarina (Olivia D'Lima), and Rosa (Charli xcx), the daughters of a sea captain (Jeff Mirza) who is anxious that they find good husbands. While he is away on a voyage, they promise to practice the skills that would endear them to their partners. However, they would much rather devote their time to reading and writing, which they had been taught by their mother, despite a law demanding that women should remain illiterate.

Delighted that this prologue has sent Manfred to sleep, Cherry retires to the safety of her boudoir, leaving Hero to retrieve the manuscript about The League of Secret Storytellers that she hides under the floorboards in her room. Next morning, Hero confides in Cherry that her grandmother was the smallest of the three moons that fill the night sky. Having killed a stag for lunch and lost to Cherry in a game of chess, Manfred insists on Hero joining them at table. However. he moves his chair to sit closer to Cherry and feeds her fruit by hand. This prompts her to ask for the next part of the story and Hero reveals how the captain brought home a merchant (Tom Stourton) to meet his offspring and he became captivated by Rosa (despite fundamentally misunderstanding her character).

Days go by and Manfred and Cherry experience very different kinds of dreams. She prays for her husband to touch her, but he breaks the news that Jerome will be absent for a couple of months. Aware that time is not on her side, Cherry resolves to wait for his return and Hero continues with her tale (which has come to fascinate the masked guards on duty around the castle) after having snooped through Manfred's belongings. As Rosa marries the merhant and leaves her sisters behind, Manfred begins to wonder about the purpose of the fable. Fifty days have already elapsed and he confides in Cherry that he had made a deal with Jerome because it had dawned on him that he was not capable of siring a child with her. He admits that he had offered to help out and she is perplexed. Fortunately, Hero is there with the next instalment, which sees the merchant discover Rosa's secret and the red-clad Beak Brothers sentence her and her siblings to be pushed off the Great Cliff for being witches.

They jump in solidarity and both Cherry and Manfred are so moved that they have difficulty sleeping. He asks Hero about the merchant and she reveals that he remarried for a second time, as his first wife had drowned and her hair and bones had been turned into a harp that had been played at his wedding to Rosa. With the days passing, Cherry comes to Hero's room by night and discovers her books and feels betrayed. She goes to Manfred, only for Jerome to return just as he carries her to the bed.

Jerome congratulates Manfred on winning the bet, but he insists he has genuinely fallen for Cherry and would happily relinquish the castle to keep her. Hero enters with her books and tries to intercede on Cherry's behalf by claiming to have bewitched her. Offering Manfred the chance to save his honour, Jerome proposes that they tell the Beak Brothers that Cherry was pregnant when he left and that the child was killed by Hero because she is evil. Manfred refuses to go along with the lie and Cherry informs her husband that she has the right to be happy with the one she loves. He sneers and orders the guards to arrest Hero, which they do with reluctance because they have been touched by her stories.

Locked in Cherry's room, Hero concludes her story by saying how the captain had buried his daughters under three large headstones, which seemed to dance in the wind. He found and read their stories and was so proud of them that he wrote a book about them and it sold across the empire. Its message even reached the remote island, where an elderly Black woman named Wilmot (Clare Perkins) was inspired to take a vow to do everything her own way from thenceforward. She tells Agnes that she is going to travel the world collecting forgotten stories and promises to find Hero and bring her home. She became a maid at the house and hid her stories before she died and Hero took employment in order to find them. But she never left because she fell in love with Cherry, who thinks this is the perfect end to her tale.

Dressed in red and blindfolded, Cherry and Hero are taken to the castle turret and the executioner (Douglas Russell) uses a horn to inform the crowd below of their crimes. However, the guards had hidden Hero's stories and told them to their friends and the crowd heckle the executioner and demand the release of the women. They refuse to apologise, however, and hold hands before jumping into the sea. They are rescued by the Moon (Felicity Jones), who places them in the sky as bright stars known as The Heroes. As we see them kissing, women from the city find Agnes and inform her that Hero and Cherry started a revolution against the Beak Brothers and they settle down by the fire to tell the story of their journey.

Clearly rooted in the tradition of Scheherazade and the One Thousand and One Nights, this book of queer hours is much stronger visually than it is dramatically or thematically. Sofia Sacomani's production design and Susie Coulthard's are exceptional and Xenia Patricia's camera does them full justice in suggesting a trilunar neverland where toxic masculinity reigns supreme. Kudos also to Paul Rice for his amusing stained glass windows to such exemplars as Janet the Barren, Sara the Unfaithful, and Nadia the Lesbian. There are echoes from everywhere from John Rawlins's Arabian Nights (1942) and Roger Corman's The Red Masque of Death (1964) to Walerian Borowczyk's Blanche (1971) and Miguel Gomes's Arabian Nights trilogy (2015). Despite its ambition and conviction, however, it's nowhere near as good as any of the aforementioned and often feels like a Pasolini pantomime, streaked with Parajanovian transgression.

Part of the problem lies (despite many detecting a crackling Sapphic yearning) in the singular lack of chemistry between Maika Monroe and Emma Corrin (who spends the picture channelling their inner Kristen Stewart) - although the narrative somewhat precludes their rapport, as Cherry and Hero are supposed to be mistress and servant for much of the running time. Nevertheless, Monroe's American accent also jars, as it seems so out of keeping with the setting and the scenario. Moreover, Jackman's structuring is cumbersome, with the prologue featuring a mugging Richard E. Grant getting things off to an awkward start. The witty, if skin-crawlingly chauvinist preamble involving Amir El-Masry and Nicholas Galitzine (playing a disarmingly puppyish predator) does much to atone. But Jackman and editors Oona Flaherty and Amélie Labrèche struggle to incorporate the stories-within-the-story, even though the use of dumbshow and montage is often accomplished.

While the gender political message is vital and valid, it's expressed a little too self-consciously, as the shifts from playfulness to profundity lack finesse. Some might feel the same way about Oliver Coates synthesised soundtrack, which occasionally gives the action the feel of a 1970s softcore romp. Yet, this is a film of laudable boldness that refuses to duplicate the norms that have been imposed by the increasingly mundane mainstream. Like Hero, Jackman uses storytelling as an act of resistance and she is to be commended for sticking so resolutely and sincerely to a vision whose independent spirit makes this such an important work of queer, feminist-forward, and non-conformist cinema.