The nature-v-nurture debate gets fresh scrutiny in The Accidental Twins (now on Netflix), a Spanish-language documentary that digs into a switched-at-birth saga involving two sets of twins in Colombia who – well, we’ll get into that in a second here, and it’s pretty nutty. Director Alessandro Angulo sits down with all involved parties, peering into a can of worms that sat unopened for 25 years, and the story he finds is undeniably fascinating.
The Gist: “It’s the kind of experiment scientists dream about, but could never do ethically,” a psychologist says during the opening teaser montage. Juicy! We meet Jorge, born in 1988 and raised in Bogota alongside his fraternal twin Carlos. In 2014, Jorge’s friend and coworker Laura spotted him working in a butcher shop – but contrary to her assumption that he had a secret second job, that man wasn’t Jorge. It was his doppelganger. Curious, they found the butcher on Facebook and started paging through his photos. Now, before we go any further, keep in mind, this is a documentary, not a nutty thriller by Cronenberg or Lynch, so there’s a perfectly reasonable, if improbable explanation for all this, even with the big revelation I’m about to indulge: Jorge came across a photo of his doppelganger sitting next to Carlos’ doppelganger. Mind. Blown.
Now, Jorge has a reputation of being a prankster, but he wasn’t joking around when he showed his more serious, buttoned-up brother Carlos the photo. Now, here’s a perfect example of the brothers’ significantly different personalities: Jorge wanted to reach out to the doppelgangers and solve this mystery; Carlos preferred to let it be. Both have a legit point, but the way I see it, once the truth has been squeezed out, there’s no putting the toothpaste back into the tube. Jorge leapfrogged Carlos’ wishes and called the doppelganger, William, to explain the situation and arrange a meeting. That night, on the sidewalk outside a Bogota church, Jorge met William, and it was like looking into a mirror. And alongside William was Wilber, the spitting image of Carlos. They walked to Carlos’ apartment. Knocked. He didn’t want to open the door. But he did, eventually. The world is the world and the truth is the truth and there’s no getting around either of them.
From here, Angulo pieces together the What The Hell Happened of it all, and the What Happened Next. In a Bogota hospital during the holiday 1988 season, an accidental baby swap between two sets of identical twins occurred. How, nobody knows for sure – most likely a lost ID bracelet and a procedural error, a legit mistake, no malfeasance. There are some additional convolutions here, but these are the bones of this extraordinary story. And then you start thinking about the legal ramifications, if there are any. And the psychological fallout, which implicates family members who maybe thought their brothers and sons were a little different from the rest of the kin, but never even dreamed a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction scenario like this would explain it. And the analytical end of it, stemming from Jorge and Carlos being raised in the urban bustle of Bogota by a single mother, and William and Wilber being raised 12 hours away, in the remote countryside near the teensy town of La Paz, with a larger family. Is this a happy story, or a sad one? I’ll hazard an answer: That’s kind of a BS question. Both can be true. It also depends on how you look at it – and maybe it also depends on your genetic makeup and the environment in which you were raised.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The 2018 Oscar-nominated doc Three Identical Strangers chronicles a similar story, albeit a far more troubling one.
Performance Worth Watching: The four “brothers” bravely open up about some of the joy, fear and apprehension they felt during their reunion a decade ago; Carlos, especially, shares his feelings, unafraid to be vulnerable, and comes off as an endearing, classic tough-on-the-outside/soft-on-the-inside personality.
Memorable Dialogue: Wilber offers words of assurance to the brother he grew up with: “The only words I could find were these: ‘William, you’re my brother until death, and that is something that will never change.’”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Is The Accidental Twins a regretful story of cruel, twisted fate? Or a happy story of a family that expanded unexpectedly? The latter seems to be true, as the documentary primarily plays out in a major key, while also touching on the more troublesome elements of this saga, e.g., feelings of guilt, indulgences of what-if/what-could-have-been scenarios and William’s sadness upon learning that he’d never meet his birth mother, since she passed away a few years prior to the big reunion. Angulo doesn’t treat the narrative as a therapy session for these men and their family members, and if there are any significant conflicts among them – one assumes they’re an inevitability; that’s a truth universal to all families, it seems – they aren’t discussed on camera. The film therefore avoids being exploitative or intrusive, which required a delicate touch from Angulo, who skillfully captures his subjects’ earnestness.
If there’s criticism to levy out here, it’s that the film is more touchy-feely than analytical, and doesn’t quite follow through with the “experiment scientists dream about” angle in much detail. But Angulo does his due diligence, interviewing a journalist who reported on the brothers’ story, asking a lawyer about legal repercussions, tracking down nurses who worked in the neonatal unit that night, and talking to psychologists and geneticists for some light, surface-level science. The answers he gets aren’t always satisfying, but such is life, right? The director might’ve gone a little deeper into the weeds of the nature/nurture debate, but his decision to maintain an emotional, heartwarming tack is ultimately uplifting: Jorge, William, Carlos and Wilber are all good people. They came together under strange circumstances and seem to be making the best of it. If The Accidental Twins has anything to say, it’s that there’s always room in the human heart for another person, or family, to love.
Our Call: In less scrupulous hands, the story of The Accidental Twins could’ve been an exploitative soap opera (like, frankly, far too many documentaries on Netflix). Instead, it’s touching and quietly inspiring, the work of an optimist. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
