As Once Lili Marlene

Lili and Marlene are seven-year-old identical twin sisters, born by artificial insemination, who move from Berlin to Barcelona shortly before the school year begins. Their mother fell in love with a Catalan man the summer before on Minorca and, after a period of long-distance communication, she decides that he is the love of her life and that she wants to be closer to him. Marlene is pure common sense and Lili pure manic brilliance. They and their mother form a very homogenous family unit. Living with this man starts out well but becomes a nightmare, eventually showing all the signs of abuse: the mother’s social isolation; verbal insults immediately followed by shows of remorse; demands that the house be kept increasingly spotless; denigrating comments in public; the mother feeling guilty; occasional incidents of physical abuse and sexual violence... But Marlene and Lili’s mother has some sort of Stockholm syndrome and puts up with it all, as it spirals desperately toward a tragic end.