Mara sisters speak as one in Venice

Rooney and Kate make screen debut together in Herzog's 'Bucking Fastard'

VENICE:

Sisters Rooney and Kate Mara have brought an unusual acting challenge to the Venice Film Festival, delivering their lines in perfect unison in Werner Herzog's 'Bucking Fastard', which premiered on Thursday.

The sisters play Jean and Joan Holbrooke, characters inspired by real-life British twins whose extraordinary closeness extends to speaking synchronously, sharing the same dreams and falling in love with the same man.

The film marks the first time Rooney and Kate Mara have appeared together on screen. Their years of shared experiences helped them develop the instinctive connection needed to perform almost every exchange in perfect synchronisation. "We had two weeks of rehearsal set up and me and Kate were together before that because we were quite nervous," Rooney Mara told Reuters.

Herzog, however, quickly became convinced that the sisters were ready. After watching them during rehearsals, the acclaimed German director reduced the planned rehearsal period to just five days. "I said, 'No more. I'm completely confident it's going to be wonderful. Stop this, shut up, we'll meet in Ireland in front of my camera'," Herzog told Reuters.

He described the sisters' performance as unprecedented, saying he had never seen anything comparable in film and doubting that such a performance would be repeated in the foreseeable future.

Rooney Mara, known for films including 'The Social Network' and 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo', said the sisters' familiarity gave them an immediate understanding that would have been difficult to create with another actor.

"There was just an unspoken world between us that we didn't have to work very hard to create at all," she said, describing the experience as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in which she had "never laughed so much". Kate Mara, whose credits include 'House of Cards' and '24', said performing in synchronisation felt almost musical.

The film centres on the sisters' shared attraction to the same man, played by Orlando Bloom. When he eventually leaves them for another woman, he obtains a restraining order to protect himself from their anger.

Bloom said working with the sisters was uncanny, describing them as appearing to breathe, dream, love and think together. "The movie feels like a poem, and they were the central focus that we were kind of marvelling at," Bloom said.

Herzog, whose films include 'Aguirre, the Wrath of God', 'Fitzcarraldo' and 'Grizzly Man', has a long association with Venice. He premiered 'Scream of Stone' at the festival in 1991 and has returned several times with both fiction films and documentaries.

'Bucking Fastard' is among 21 films competing for Venice's Golden Lion, the festival's top prize, which will be presented on September 12.