Venice film festival: Rooney and Kate Mara play the real-life Chaplin sisters who spoke in unsettling unison in this silly, pointless drama
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Werner Herzog is such a unique film-maker that even a dud from him has some interest, but sadly a dud is what this is. It is a fiction feature based on a true story which – despite a few laughs – systematically wastes the audience’s time, as well as the talents of its formidable female leads, real-life sisters Rooney and Kate Mara. You can almost feel this pointless, aimless film making it up as it goes along, losing its way, line by line, scene by scene.
It is inspired by the story of twins Freda and Greta Chaplin from York in the UK; they eerily spoke in unison and in the 1980s were the subject of a highly publicised court case for harassing a neighbour. Herzog’s movie transplants their story to Ireland, in which the Maras play weirdly but comically interdependent sisters Jean and Joan Holbrook whose lives are sent in all sorts of loopy directions. Orlando Bloom plays the roguish neighbour who breaks the women’s hearts (Herzog imagines them as a short-lived throuple), and Domhnall Gleeson is a caring social worker who tries to make them less dysfunctional by taking their case after they move away from the scene of their sexual resentment and legal shame. (During the trial they shout out the spoonerism of the title.)
Eventually the Holbrooks live with an aunt in the country where they (bafflingly) conceive a desire to extend a tunnel they find in a hillside cave, believing it will take them from Ireland to the supposed utopia of Orkney where they will be happy. There is a (sort of) entertaining touch of Jules Verne in the outcome to all this. But when the film finally fades to black, after an eventful but also dull story, it’s almost difficult to credit how inconsequential and throwaway it’s all been. The women’s lives are theoretically poignant and fascinating and the Mara sisters show that they are more than capable of showing something like this. But the characters they’re given to play are essentially just silly. Perhaps Herzog could have made a fascinating documentary about the real Chaplin sisters while they were still alive. But Bucking Fastard is a Dumping Thisappointment.
• Bucking Fastard screened at the Venice film festival
It is inspired by the story of twins Freda and Greta Chaplin from York in the UK; they eerily spoke in unison and in the 1980s were the subject of a highly publicised court case for harassing a neighbour. Herzog’s movie transplants their story to Ireland, in which the Maras play weirdly but comically interdependent sisters Jean and Joan Holbrook whose lives are sent in all sorts of loopy directions. Orlando Bloom plays the roguish neighbour who breaks the women’s hearts (Herzog imagines them as a short-lived throuple), and Domhnall Gleeson is a caring social worker who tries to make them less dysfunctional by taking their case after they move away from the scene of their sexual resentment and legal shame. (During the trial they shout out the spoonerism of the title.)
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Source: theguardian.com · Peter Bradshaw. Published 3 Sept 2026, 03:00 pm.
