A Legitimate New Portrayal of Consanguinamorous Siblings

Lesley Haw at theupcoming.co.uk interviewed director Adrian Sitaru about his latest film, "Ilegitim" ("Illegitimate") and it sounds like and interesting one both in content and style. [PLEASE NOTE there are spoilers at that link.]

Director Adrian Sitaru’s latest work, Ilegitim (Illegitimate), tackles the taboo topic of incest between a brother and his twin sister. The film was entirely unscripted, with the cast were given the freedom to perform as naturally as possible, producing some wonderful, profound philosophical lines along the way. The guerrilla style handheld camera enhances the  authenticity.

I'd be very interested in hearing from anyone who has seen it. To be clear, the relationship between the twins is portrayed as consensual, at least overall.

It’s relatively unusual to cover the theme of incest. Is it something particularly interesting to you?

Not too much. I don’t have brothers or sisters, but to me it was more like a kind of experiment. The most important thing was for the actors to understand the characters and what siblings mean to each other. Most of them have siblings, but not twins. But they researched a lot, and discussed a lot about twins with twins, to find out the secret about this connection and what it’s like when they get older. Also, they researched studies about incest, not only in Romania, but the UK or US and cases of it that society was against or not. It was 2014 when we worked on it. There was a famous case in Germany, I remember, involving a brother and sister who lived together and they wanted to marry and have a child, and it was a big discussion in German society.   It’s interesting also because it’s on the border of being legal or not.

Here is Haw's review, [ALSO HAS SPOILERS] which is summarized with four out of five stars...

The normally taboo topic of incest is at the forefront of this film, and arises between the twin brother and sister (Alina Grigore and Robi Urs), inevitably creating testing times. Then, to rub salt into the wound, pregnancy and the question of abortion ensue, meaning everyone’s patience, tempers and tolerance levels are challenged, and the father manifests all this in violence.

If you want to watch the trailer, here it is.

FYI, Haw brings up the possibility of genetic problems for a child of siblings. For more about that, read this and follow any of the links of interest.

It would be great to see more portrayals of consanguinamorous relationships that treat the issue with realism and not with negativity towards love.