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Q- There is one element in the argument that works extremely well, and that is when we learn that two of the characters are brothers.
A- Yes, and I’d like to keep the secret. A love the sense of fraternity, and I have always enjoyed movies with siblings: Warren Beatty being beaten up in the parking lot for watching her sister’s honour (Barbara Loden) in “Splendor in the Grass”. Legs Diamond, in Budd Boetticher’s film, being captured because of her brother’s negligence. The gang in Bonnie and Clyde lead by two brothers. The Godfather saga has left us with wonderful sequences with brothers and sisters loving, beating, protecting and killing one another. All the children of “Ma Baker” in “No orchids for Miss Blandish” (author, James Hadley Chase; director, John Legh Clowes). “Bloody Mama”, by Roger Corman. Fierce mothers leading gangs made by their children. Those who break the law together stay together.
I love all the siblings of Alain Delon in “Rocco and his brothers”. I even like Michael and Latoya Jackson. Natalie Wood and George Chakiris in “West side Story”.
Hayley Mills playing her own twin in “The parent trap”, the twin sisters in de Palma’s “Sisters”. The Marx brothers in any of their films. Thrilling Harry Dean Stanton in “París-Texas” and his silent visit to brother Dean Stockwell. The Mills sisters in “Fallen Angel” by Preminger, the lovely loners in “Arsénico por compasión” Shelley Winters’ little orphans chased by evil Robert Mitchum in “The Night of the Hunter”. Even though Raymond Chandler’s dialogues took all sentimentalism out of her, I love Lauren Bacall defending her sister in “The Big Sleep”...
These relations are difficult sometimes (no wonder!). That’s when sex becomes involved. I like Sam Sheppard’s “Fool for love”, and “Middlesex”, where two siblings end up married.
Fraternity seems to be a worn-out term these days, being replaced by friendship, but they are no exactly the same thing; fraternity is the result of two great feelings, love and friendship, bound together by something as unfathomable as consanguinity.
I forgot to mention before “Whatever happened to Baby Jane?” (Robert Aldrich), a wonderful puppet show with two sisters, both former child stars, who live together despite their hatred. One of them (Bette Davis) ends up killing the other (Joan Crawford).
There’s a bit of this in “La mala educación”, although not so explicit. As kids, Juan (Angel Andrade) envies his elder brother Ignacio for doing everything better than him. Jealousy among brothers is very common when they are young, but Juan’s grows in time. Both want to become artists, and Ignacio is able to do everything so naturally: sing, dance, write, read, transform and act. Everything Juan would like to do Ignacio did it better. And Juan hated him in silence until Ignacio gave him reason to hate him openly when he begun taking drugs and dressing up as a woman, in their hometown. Family life was like hell due to Ignacio’s behavior. The mother, with a heart condition, lived and eternal unbearable situation. The father could not take the shame and begun to drink more and more often, until he was found dead on a frozen puddle one winter day.