Also known as Schwesterlein, this quality drama from co-directors Stephanie Chuat and Veronique Reymond focuses on how illness and looming mortality affects the loving relationship between two siblings, fraternal twins Lisa (Nina Hoss) and Sven (Lars Eidinger). She is a novelist/playwright married to a Switzerland-based school headmaster; he is a prominent gay Berlin stage actor, who, though stricken with a form of leukemia, still looks forward to a return engagement with his famed interpretation of Hamlet.
Their creativity has helped each other through life, and after Lisa donates her bone marrow, Sven is well enough to leave the hospital. But he tries to recommence his stage career, in denial over his own fragility. Keeping watch over Sven (barely), Lisa escorts him to her Swiss residence, where the burden of caring for the flamboyant and driven thespian exposes fault lines in Lisa's marriage.
Acting and dialogue are top flight in a narrative that never falls into the soap opera trap. There are no easy solutions or answers for its cast of characters, all trying to do the right thing but with sometimes calamitous results. Artistic expression proves to be a vital form of therapy for both Lisa and Sven when medical science fails, but it has its limits as well. There is a haunting Bach soundtrack, and viewers might note the supporting role for 1970s international ingenue (now opera director) Marthe Keller, as the protagonists' feckless mother.
Disc extras include a personal introduction from the women filmmakers (who say they have been making stories together since age 10; the collaborative relationship shown on-screen somewhat reflects their own), and an English-language short subject "Three Deaths," by Jay Dockendorf, which Americanizes a Leo Tolstoy short story. Recommended for foreign-cinema shelves. (Aud: P)