Two of Us, the Queer Love Story That Addresses Cinema’s Problem With Age

, the supremely moving debut feature from director Filippo Meneghetti, is a covert queer love story with a twist. Pensioners Madeleine and Nina live across the hall from one another in a small French town. Even Madeleine’s grown-up children Anne and Frédéric think they’re just neighbours, but the truth is much more interesting. For years the two women have been conducting a clandestine romance while Madeleine’s kids delude themselves that she’s still in thrall to their late father.

The heartbreaking twist comes when Madeleine suffers a stroke which leaves her mute and inert. Her children hire a lacklustre live-in carer , but for some reason Nina – to them, simply the kind woman opposite, at least initially – keeps finding reasons to pop in and help.

Meneghetti also wanted his film to address what he calls “cinema’s problem with age”. The queer love stories we see on screen tend to involve relatively young people, while for decades Hollywood has paired ageing leading men with actresses in their twenties and thirties. It shouldn’t be unusual to see two septuagenarian women being intimate with one another, but sadlystill feels noteworthy for including beautifully tender romantic moments between Madeleine and Nina.

Meneghetti’s film explores emotions ranging from violent rage to piercing grief, but he says “self-censorship” is a key theme. Because Madeleine has grown up with the idea that a woman should fall in love with a man, then start a family, she carries a deep internalised shame for turning her back on this heteronormative ideal. Although her relationship with Nina is much more enriching than the one she had with her domineering husband, she feels compelled to compartmentalise it and keep it secret.

It’s this depiction of love prevailing against the odds – albeit in a way that might feel compromised or constricted to some viewers – that makesso poignant. Meneghetti says that after a screening in Thessaloniki, Greece, an older woman approached him to say that she had never properly understood her daughter’s queerness untii watching his film. “You know, I made this film thinking about two people in particular that were so important in my life,” he says humbly.

Why spoil this much, though?

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