Kong Ho Meng Twin Sisters carries so much promise to be a one of the great Holocaust-related movie pieces, while being unique in that it touches none of the gory parts of war but with enough sentimental value and focus on the consequences of complicated family relationships.However I was not impressed - it looked like an average movie to me in the end because it lacked a lot of kick that I expected but did not materialize, given the weight of the subjects matter.One of the major flaws - I was quite disappointed that the (adult) sisters lacked the enthusiasm or chemistry in certain very critical scenes. Not knowing each other for so long was not a good enough excuse for this flaw, because the sisters apparently had better chemistry with their male partners during their own first encounters? The arc involving the old version of the sisters looked like a mere filler to me as I believe the movie chose to detract focus on the present and dwell more in the past, a big mistake, as they could have demonstrated more via a longer last-chance reconciliation meeting.This was an obvious contrast to the child versions of the sisters who were better actors in my opinion, as the kid actors had demonstrated strong raw emotions and worries towards each other characters despite being miles apart, and that was when the movie was at its best (looked like a 4.5 star at that point).

stamper I read the book to this film about 6 years ago, back when I was in high school and was so impressed by it that I bought the book for my bookcase three years ago or something. I haven't read the book since and I'm not some kind of purist, heck I don't even remember the specifics of the book. At best that makes me as biased as someone who didn't read the book at all...or at worst it means that I'm not a 'purist'.Translating a book into film, the visible medium, there are so many stages at which it can go wrong. Luckily it didn't with this one. The casting is perfect. I especially liked how Lotte and Anna spoke believably broken German and Dutch. Not as it sometimes happens in American productions, when they for instance speak Dutch and say it is German. This was very well done indeed and added to the films worth. What touches me most about De Tweeling though is the fact at heart, that you get shaped partly by your environment. It is worked out very well in this film and my favorite part is that the film distances itself (as does the book) from pointing out one of the two sisters as 'the bad guy'. The film just shows the horror, the desperation and the pain on the common man from both sides; the aggressor and the wrongfully invaded. It is a truly great theme and it is one of the few films I guess in which you actually get to feel sympathy for the Germans (or at least some of them). Maybe that is understandable. Maybe it is logic that most films portray the Germans as gruesome and despicable as quite a lot of them maybe were. But every once in a while a film comes along that shows us that they are human too, that they suffered losses; that German lives lost shatter German families as they shatter American, Dutch, Polish, Jewish, English and so on. This is one of those films. It strays from the cliché, which is what I liked about it as I did like Stalingrad (1993) and Die Brücke (1959).8 out of 10

Braama Two twin sisters Lothe and Anna, born in prewar Germany (1920) are separated at the age of eight when there last parent and father dies. Because the Dutch and German relatives "themselves are already at war", both the children grow up in a totally different environment, different language, -parents, -family and -friends. The one's poisoned by the anti-, the other by the pro German news and propaganda, we watch these beautiful children grow and both their life's being build on what they go through, what they see, what they hear and there conclusions about that. "Accidentilly" they finally meet on "neutral ground" the flashbacks make you love them both and understand both the women and the choices they've made. As older woman, Anna says it beautifully simple "if we as sisters cannot solve this problem, who can?" and as she is dying to hear her sisters forgiveness, she gets both.A film which shows us that judging the other side is not as easy as it might seem.

Boba_Fett1138 "De Tweeling" is more than just another WW II drama and truly adds something and is made interesting by a very good story.The story is truly the power of this movie. It shows the perspective of WW II from the Dutch as well as the German side, which makes this movie really interesting and powerful. It shows how the twin sisters that already didn't had any contact for years are driven further out of each other because of WW II. It doesn't only show the Nazi-German military perspective of war but also that of the German civilians and in a way helps you to understand why so many Germans supported the Nazi's in WW II. It's a shame that there are still some "typical book elements" present in the movie that I sure work fine in the book but not in the movie, including the typical book ending (I say no more.).The acting is for especially Dutch standards pretty high. Jeroen Spitzenberger acts magnificent but of course also the German actors pull of very well.There are some excellent and impressive scene's. The movie doesn't show any gore or horror of WW II but focuses on the emotional effects of it on individuals and especially the twin sisters of course, of which one grew up in the Netherlands and the other in Germany. It doesn't only show the effects of the relationship between the two during the war but also long after it.I even like it a bit better as "The Pianist".9/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/