Twinsters (2015)
I’m obsessed with the MTV series, Catfish: The TV Show. Every episode, the show unites people in online relationships who have never met, usually because one of the people isn’t being honest about who they really are. The hosts, Nev and Max, investigate the details eventually bringing people together usually resulting in some sort of dramatic reveal. The show often presents technology as a nefarious tool that preys on the emotionally vulnerable and how it can distort our perceptions of reality.
Twinsters presents the brighter side to technology.
The documentary centers around Samantha Futerman (who also co-directed the project), an actress out of LA who was adopted from South Korea as a young child. She appears in feature films as well as YouTube videos with her friends. Things get interesting when a French girl named Anaïs who seemingly looks exactly like Samantha. The two begin to correspond and their stories have striking similiraties. They have the same birthday, they were adopted from the same region, as well as their striking physical resemblance. Through detective work and DNA testing, their assumptions are proven correct. Samantha and Anaïs are twins separated at birth.
What’s amazing is the intense emotional connection they feel for each other almost immediately. They immediately adopt (or maybe they were already there) each other’s mannerisms and the two form inside jokes almost immediately. It makes you wonder just how much of our personalities are learned or whether we inherit some of these things genetically. It rang similarly to the Seven Up series of documentaries in which a team of filmmakers check in with the same group of British students (now grown adults) every seven years. It’s incredible to see how much of our personalities were already set before we even know who we are.
The film reaches an incredibly emotional conclusion when Samantha and Anaïs returning to South Korea to meet their foster parents and attend a convention with other Korean adoptees. Despite their similarities, the two sisters have different reactions to their adoptions. For Samantha, it was something she didn’t think of much. It’s just the way things were. Her family was white, she was Asian. Anaïs, on the other hand, had a much tougher time with her adoption and self identity. I drew connections to Donald Duk, Fresh off the Boat, and Better Luck Tomorrow with their struggles to reconcile their American identity and Asian roots. It’s impossible not to feel for both Samatha and Anaïs.
Twinsters is one of those documentaries that proves truth is stranger than fiction.
Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung
Janie is a young woman working towards her PhD in mathematics when her sister Hannah goes missing. Her parents are worried. Janie is dismissive after a lifetime of looking after her younger, more emotional, sister. They learn through a friend she’s been living in California. This separation is further complicated when their father is diagnosed with terminal cancer. At the behest of her parents, Janie is tasked with tracking down her sister and getting her to Korea, where her father is undergoing cutting edge cancer treatment, not available in the United States.
The novel is full of regret and all the things left unsaid between family members. We’re privy to all the loyalty and betrayal the family has endured from one war-torn generation to the next. We learn of the families history in Korea and the family members that are gone and never spoke of. We learn that the dying father was raised by his older sister, Komo, who has grown into a prickly older woman with a pension for saying the wrong thing and the wrong time.
Forgotten Country is a beautiful and heartbreaking book that left me wondering which country had been forgotten. Our main characters seem, at times, torn between two different cultures, never really fitting into either. The novel paints a trouble childhood for the girls who suffer abuse from their peers and family members. However, they haven’t really adhered to the Korean way of life, to be accepted by her father’s extended family. Komo, the aunt, shames them for not being married with children at their age.
Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung was a tough read for me. Not to say I didn’t enjoy it, but damn was it sad. I appreciated how dynamic all of the characters were. You see the best and the worst in all of them.