Two Small Bodies

Eileen Maloney is seeking a divorce and her two children are missing. The macho detective Brann arrives at Eileen's house since he suspects her of murdering her children. When he gets there he is no longer sure. Is this slenderlimbed woman really capable of killing her own children? Brann himself is married and has children, too. The thought of infanticide makes him sick and he cannot hide his distaste, but
at the same time he is attracted to this independent woman. The atmosphere is charged with attraction and antipathy, desire and
hatred when the two meet for the first time during extreme circumstances.

COMMENTARY
What is a mother without her two children?
An ice queen, a slut, a murderess? What is a man who tries to make a woman confess that she has murdered her children? A professional doing his job, a cold-blooded sadist or an accomplice?
A woman sits in her dressing-gown outside her front door. She looks tired, but she is in no hurry to go to bed. When she finally gets up and walks into the house, she lingers in a big and airy room. A nursery without children. The woman sits down at a table for a while and runs her finger across a child's drawing.
This is the only time we see her on her own, the suspect cocktail waitress Eileen Maloney whose two children have vanished without a trace from a room that was locked from the outside. The next moment the doorbell rings. It is Brann the detective, her tormentor. Her conscience? Again and again he asks the same question: what did really happen that night when the children disappeared? He is
stubborn as a mule. He turns up unexpectedly at all times. He tries to provoke her. He cannot stop himself. Maybe he doesn't know in the end if it is the need for justice or the desire for forbidden fruit that makes him tick. He is a family man himself. He doesn't have any problems with identity.
But she says: ''I am not completely sorry that my children are gone.'' And in the end it may even be that he envies her because she has done the unthinkable.
Two Small Bodies is a chamber play where credibility is as true as it is false, as if the seemingly safe home where the drama is acted out is no more than a collection of sliding setpieces. The film is based on a play, but it also possesses a bewitching concentration thanks to the two actors Fred Ward and Suzy Amis.
The cast may be the shortest in cinematic history, but Two Small Bodies achieves something unusual in our times: it prolongs the course of events, drags it out for as long as possible, carries its monotony until it reaches breaking-point. This is achieved both consciously and with skill. ':'
Mikaela Kindblom

Medverkande
Fred Ward, Suzy Amis: Producent
Daniel Zuta: Manus
Beth B, Neal Bell: Foto
Phil Parmet: Musik
Swans: Talat språk
English