Venice Film Festival 2026 – Bucking Fastard ★★★

Released: TBC (Venice 2026)

Director: Werner Herzog

Starring: Rooney Mara, Kate Mara, Orlando Bloom, Domhnall Gleeson

The only real difference between Jean Holbrooke (Kate Mara) and Joan Holbrooke (Rooney Mara) is that Jean is left-handed. Otherwise they are so similar that they move the same and also talk in sync, down to the stuttering, or the spoonerism of the title. They are sisters, living in central Ireland, and so strange and unusual they are kind of out of time, a world to themselves. Everyone can instinctively tell it would be a cruelty to separate or treat them as the distinct people they of course are. The astonishing central performances of the Mara sisters are the reason to see Bucking Fastard, which is as light-hearted a comedy that you could imagine Werner Herzog making. That is to say, not particularly light-hearted at all.

The sisters are introduced in court, testifying as to why their next door neighbour Mr Mulroney (Orlando Bloom doing an awful accent) should not need a restraining order against them. The sisters have had a sexual relationship with Mr Mulroney and are so in love that they consider him their husband. To his credit, Mr Mulroney allows their precedent-setting joint testimony as proposed by the judge, because he fully appreciates that not even a charming drunken limo driver such as himself could come between them. It is somewhat awkward that he has a new wife, though, and the sisters’ repeated incursions onto his property to damage his cars and burn his stuff has caused quite the drama. After a series of events the sisters end up in Dublin, in a rent-free apartment that involves a new set of problems, but also the delightful attentions of a lovely social worker named Timothy (Domhnall Gleeson doing an easier version of his character in The Incomer). But if you think that’s where the story will stay, you have no idea.

Now. The Maras do not even attempt an Irish accent, which gives this story an air of being out of place that it never quite shakes. If some stalking and light arson is all it would take to get a free apartment in Dublin, then a whole lot of people will start romantically misbehaving. A bigger issue is we never see the Holbrooke parents, meaning it’s impossible to understand how the sisters got this way or how them being this way was tolerated. What do they do for money? Since it seems they don’t work, how do they pass the time? (They are modelled on a pair of real-life English twins who died about 15 years ago.) Two bikers the sisters meet in a petrol station and a toddler they coo over in a chip shop get more characterisation than their Aunt Louise (Marion O’Dwyer) – though considering the auntie suggests they name their pet fox Leprechaun, this is probably for the best. But in a strange way absolutely none of this matters.

What makes Bucking Fastard such an unmissable experience is the chance to see two such top-tier actresses portray two characters so close that they are almost one person cleaved in twain. They dress looking at each other instead of into mirrors, in matching plain dress that costumer designer Maeve Paterson clearly deliberately chose to make them look twice their age. They always leave the house with matching tapestry handbags and a long umbrella each, too. When they unlock a door both their hands are on the key. When they eat they bite and chew in perfect synchronicity. It’s so rare for them to move separately that Timothy comments when one sets the kettle down and the other the teacups. And it’s impossible to imagine that anyone but sisters could have showed how to be so thoroughly inside the thoughts of another person that their minds are basically shared. A documentary about the Maras’ rehearsal process to finesse the way they moved and spoke for these parts would be as fascinating at this movie.

And yet it’s hard to imagine saying a film by Werner Herzog isn’t weird enough, but the comedy in Bucking Fastard doesn’t quite rise to the excellence of the situation. Either we should have gotten a better picture of the original family dynamic, or things in the Holbrookes’ adulthood should have gotten way, way, way weirder. Some of the marketing rather spoils the final third of the film, though if you know anything about the work of Mr Herzog you’ll know it’s one of the last places left for him to go. But you also can see why, even though he wrote the script, it was hard for him to know how to handle the sisters. Jean and Joan are a complete world to themselves, virtually untouchable and definitely unbreakable by anybody else. So either we needed to see more of the friction between the world of the Holbrooke sisters and the world everybody else lives in, or we needed to see much more of the Holbrooke sisters’ world. Was Mr Mulroney their first? Do they really think they could share a husband without any issues? Do they really think they should?

Though again, when the central performances are so fascinating to watch, does it matter?