Kate and Rooney Mara have finally found a project weird enough to share. Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard just dropped a new image of the real-life sisters in matching braids and identical thousand-yard stares, and honestly? It looks exactly as unhinged as you’d hope from a director who once ate his own shoe on camera for a documentary. Bucking Fastard is loosely based on the lives of Freda and Greta Chaplin, British identical twins who made headlines in the 1980s for getting a restraining order slapped on them by a man they both dated.
Herzog has been sitting on this concept since 1991, which means he’s had over three decades to marinate in whatever bizarre energy this story demands. The Mara sisters play Jean and Joan Holbrooke, twin sisters who believe true love exists in an imaginary land — and the only way to reach it is by digging a tunnel through a mountain range. Yes, really. That’s the plot. They’re going to dig. With shovels. For love. In unison. While wearing matching outfits.
The new image shows the sisters in perfect visual sync, which tracks because apparently they speak in unison, dream in unison, and basically function as one entity with two very famous faces. Kate Mara told reporters that she and Rooney had been hunting for something to do together for years, but the real challenge was finding a filmmaker they both actually wanted to work with.
Enter Herzog, a man who once pulled a ship over a mountain and seems constitutionally incapable of making a movie that doesn’t make you question your own sanity. The sisters were spotted filming on Dublin’s Capel Street back in April, looking like they’d stepped out of a Victorian fever dream, and now we’ve got our first proper look at the results. It was worth the wait.
Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson round out the cast, presumably playing men who make increasingly poor decisions around the twin sisters. The film just premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it reportedly earned a standing ovation. A standing ovation. For a movie about twin sisters digging a tunnel because they’re horny for an imaginary boyfriend. Venice is unwell, and we love it. Bucking Fastard completes a self-declared trilogy for Herzog, following Fitzcarraldo and Grizzly Man, which tells you everything about the man’s ego and absolutely nothing about whether those films actually belong together.
But who cares? The Mara sisters are finally sharing a screen, and they’re doing it while dressed like they time-traveled from a Brontë novel to commit mild acts of geological terrorism. If that’s not cinema, what is? Herzog reunited with cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger and composer Ernst Reijseger for this one, so at least it’ll sound and look incredible while it slowly unravels your grip on reality. The film is currently competing for the Golden Lion, because of course it is. Pack your shovels and your emotional support blanket. You’re going to need both.