‘Twinless’ review: Lost souls connect in a complex, imbalanced affair

“You get me,” says softhearted himbo Roman (Dylan O’Brien) right after meeting the darkly witty Dennis (James Sweeney) at a support group for twins who have lost their other sibling halves. The two grief-stricken men ache to be understood.

For someone to get you so effortlessly that even the mundane task of grocery shopping feels comforting is an anti-loneliness gift from the universe. The misguided fostering of such deeply felt companionship between the two new pals unravels in “Twinless,” a shrewdly constructed, heartrending dramedy that the multitalented Sweeney also wrote and directed with admirable originality.

The main characters’ bond over loss coils around a secret that burdens Dennis, a gay man fascinated with twinship, the more time they spend together. (It’s here that a spoiler-averse reader will want to check out.) Dennis is indeed twinless — not by a twist of fate but because he came into this world a singleton and is lying. In pretending to share Roman’s affliction, Dennis is also hiding that he had a short-lived fling with Roman’s brother. That the audience is made privy to this deceit, including how Dennis forced his way into Roman’s life, casts a complex tension on their subsequent heart-to-hearts.

With a discerning eye for casual reflections and mirrored images, cinematographer Greg Cotten often films Sweeney’s Dennis through windows and partitions, evoking the feeling of being on the outside looking in, revealing via form that the character has fabricated a falsehood-ridden facade (or several of them) for himself.

On the flip side, O’Brien’s Roman may not possess the sharpness of “the brightest tool in the shed” as he erroneously says, but his disarmingly endearing lack of malice enthralls the more cynical Dennis. A reassuring wink from Roman equates to a nourishing balm for a validation-starved Dennis. It’s those small gestures during their hangouts — like Dennis refraining from correcting Roman’s misuse of idioms — that forge a special if imbalanced dynamic as they try to fill their respective voids.

Flashbacks introduce Roman’s deceased counterpart Rocky (also O’Brien in a transformative dual role), a confident and wryly charming gay man. Though inherently connected, Roman and Rocky differ not only in their sexual orientation, but in their aptitude to face the world. While Rocky moved away and thrived, Roman withered in inadequacy feeling abandoned. Sweeney’s observations about this duality, as seen through O’Brien’s characters, dilute the romanticized notion that having an identical double shields a person from isolation.

As much as their codependent friendship brings them closer, when spoken to at the same time, Roman and Dennis always differ in their answers, evincing an underlying disconnect. Sweeney’s impeccable screenplay accounts for these seemingly inadvertent details to later bloom into meaningful narrative payoffs. Moments of effective deadpan comedy stem from Dennis’ biting remarks going over Roman’s head or from uncomfortable silences and lingering stares, which emphasize the manipulation that’s happening, Dennis molding himself to be exactly what Roman needs him to be.

And then, in the quiet intimacy of a hotel room during a trip to Seattle to catch a hockey game (a building block of their burgeoning bromance), Roman agrees to pretend that Dennis is Rocky in order to work through unresolved feelings about his gone-too-soon brother.

Drifting between boiling anger and crushing regret, O’Brien’s delivery of a monologue to the ghost of Rocky astounds for its insides-bearing rawness. Roman struggles to get out his sentences amid painful cries of despair, the unfiltered grief pouring out of him.

That staggering scene alone could render this a career-best performance for O’Brien given its vulnerability. But the layering of Roman’s angry outbursts — including a bro-like proclivity to resolve conflict with violence — and the undercurrent of innocence that permeates his every interaction with Dennis enshrine O’Brien’s turn as one of the best of the year.

Though O’Brien is flexing his emotional range here, his hunky sincerity lands in part because Sweeney remains steady in the opposite registry. It feels courageous for Sweeney to direct himself into embodying such a conflicted, guilt-ridden person that at times gives into his negativity and becomes unlikable (he played a similarly awkward character in his feature debut “Straight Up”). While Roman stumbles through life without Rocky, Dennis dreads the realization that his lies may undo everything. In a sense, Sweeney writes Dennis as someone also mourning the death of an idealized situation he thought would fix him.

And when Dennis’ almost unbearably happy-go-lucky co-worker Marcie (a pitch-perfect Aisling Franciosi) hits it off with Roman, turning Dennis into the third wheel, the writer-director starts to inch his way toward a key takeaway: that neediness hurts, regardless if it’s a romantic partner, a sibling or a platonic relationship. In final scene akin to the ending of Alfonso Cuarón’s “Y Tu Mamá También,” Sweeney suggests, both visually and verbally, that only the truth can make these two buds truly inseparable. We are no longer watching them from afar. The walls have come down. They speak in unison.