A drama about finding and losing love in a war-torn country
©Fifi Leigh iPhone snapshot at UCI campus
Thursday night, I decided to watch the movie, Twice Born, on the independent channel. I found a movie trailer for this film.
Twice Born, a 2012 drama about a woman’s journey to find her second husband, Diego, an American photographer, who had died in Sarajevo during the Bosnia War. Currently married to her third husband, she takes her teenage son with her. The movie moves back and forth from current time and the past, when her friend Gojko unexpectedly and surprisingly visits her. She thought he had died in the war. As they get together and chat, the story goes back when they were young friends, hanging out together. Gojko introduces Gemma to his artist friends, and a young photographer instantly falls in love with her, which leads to a short, wild unbridled romance, similar to a roller coaster ride. When he leaves, she marries her first husband, but they eventually divorce. She is reunited with Diego and they eventually marry. But they cannot have kids because Gemma is infertile. On a subway, Diego and Gemma meet Aska, a sexy Muslim with blue eyes who loves listening to Kurt Cobain. Gemma hires her to be their surrogate. Aska agrees to have sexual intercourse with Diego for money, which describes the harsh realities of a war-torn country and people’s desperation for money. But soldiers raid the city, shooting many people, burning down buildings, and interrupting their lovemaking. Diego seems to escape, while Aska is gang-raped by the soldiers. One of the soldiers extinguishes his cigarette on Aska’s tattoo, which was disgusting. It actually reminded me of the IDF torturing Palestinians, and some actually extinguishes cigarettes on Palestinians’ skin to torture and abuse them. They carry her body away.
The actor, Adnan Haskovic, who plays Gojko, talks about his role in the movie as well as promoting the movie.
Gemma walks around, reminiscing about Diego and Gojko. She remembers Aska giving birth in Sarajevo, and Gemma giving her the money before taking the baby; she flees Sarajevo on a plan with the baby. Since Diego lost his passport, he was unable to leave with his wife. When they arrive in Rome, she meets an Italian man, who helps her and becomes her third husband. Gemma and Pietro become Italian citizens with Italian passports, living a new life under a new identity. Pietro thinks Gemma is his real mother, even though he has blue eyes similar to Aska. He also thinks that Diego is his real father. Gemma doesn’t tell him anything because he now has a new identity as an Italian. She wants him to move on as an Italian to be unaware of his past and his birth.
The actress, Saadet Askoy, is interviewed about her role in the movie.
She later meets Gojko, his wife, Aska, and their daughter, Sebina, named about Gojko’s younger sister who died during the war with his mother. Aska wants to see her son, but Gemma doesn’t want to introduce Pietro to Aska, until Aska tells her the true story about her baby’s conception and Diego is not Pietro’s father. Aska got to meet and chat with Pietro, and they mostly just stared at each other. I was hoping she would tell him at the end so that he would know who his real parents are, but Pietro and Gemma left back to Italy while Aska, Gojko, and their daughter watched them go off. It seems everyone moved on with their life, going their separate ways, and at least Gemma knows the truth about her surrogate son, and her late second husband Diego, as well as her friend Gojko and his wife Aska. It’s a small world because they all seem interconnected. Pietro’s real mother later becomes Gojko’s wife, and Pietro now has a half-sister with Gemma’s old friend.
While browsing on YouTube, I found a video that summarizes the movie in Hindi.
Twice Born is an Italian/Spanish film, also called Venuto al Mondo, directed by Sergio Castellitto, screenplay by Sergio Castellitto and Margaret Mazzantini, story by Margaret Mazzantini, and produced by Sergio Castellitto and Roberto Sessa. This movie stars Penelope Cruz, Emile Hirsch, Adnan Haskovic, Saadet Aksoy, Pietro Castellitto, Luca De Filippo, and Jane Birkin. This multilingual movie involved Italian, Bosnian and some English, but there was English subtitles when the actors were speaking a foreign language.
I enjoyed the movie because it has lots of twists and turns because I wasn’t sure what was going to happen when Gojko suddenly calls Gemma, telling her that he wants to see her again. She seemed happy to hear his voice, eager to see her old friend. But the story goes down memory lane because Gemma takes Pietro to search for Diego, hoping that Diego is still alive, as well as she wants to introduce Pietro to Diego. Instead, she learns the truth about everyone, although Pietro is still living a lie as her son and an Italian, even though he got to meet his real mother and half-sister, without knowing that Aska is his mother and Sebina is his half-sister. Gemma was probably trying to protect her son from knowing his real birth situation, as well as fearing to lose him, if he knows the truth.
At the movie’s press conference, the cast and directors are interviewed during the Toronto International Film Festival 2012