One of the best movies I've watched in my life. The soundtrack is perfect , the acting is extraordinary and the script is magnificent. I don't know how fifty shades of gray has a better note in meta.score than this movie... How is this possible? Is there something wrong with me?It is a film that conveys so much emotion. We are able to hate and love a character. A movie that makes us cry with excitement. If you are reading this and you doubt me, watch the movie, Trust me! For me this is one of the most underrate films in history.Can you believe that this movie has received one of the worst rewis in rotten.tomatos: It holds an 18% rating on Rotten.tomatoes based on 22 reviews.

Twice Born tells the story of interconnecting parallels stories upon one within the context of a story art. The film toggles between present-day scenes depicting the mother and son's complicated relationship and flashes of the tragic love affair between Gemma and Diego (Emile Hirsch) in the early 1990s that led to Pietro's conception. The boy's birth was the product of rather bizarre and secretive circumstances that places his biological kinship under suspicion, and the point of Gemma's trip is to reveal to him the truth about his filiation, but it turns out that she herself only knows half the story, if not less.We are then later to come in between. We then see Gemma and Diego's love is the sort that only seems possible in Europe. The beginning of their story has the gravitas of the destine-bound love at the center of Julio Medem's Lovers of the Artic Circle, but none of its focus, as Twice Born quickly turns out to be more interested in reveling in the secrets of its storyline than in its sentiments. Gemma and Diego grow apart as she discovers she can't have children and is scared that her sterility will make him chase other women. Although it does spark some chemistry and connections, the later scenes have a separate distance from one another, and it appears to feel more so all over the place. Twice Born does extend and could have been a little shorter, however there are an audience of these type of films.

A movie with a confusing time-line might not be everyones cup of tea. It should be clear early on (though the time-lines do not change every other minute, most of the time), if you are into the storytelling that is handed to you. It seems unfair, that this movie did not get as much notice as some others. But hopefully when you discover this for you, you can treasure it more.Speaking of treasuring things: the movie does have many nationalities and play in a war zone (at one time-line, which is the mid 90s) and has many languages it goes through. If you don't watch a dubbed version, I hope they imprinted subtitles on your version, otherwise you might have problems following the movie. It might be about 50% in English, the rest is quite a lot of European languages (including, Italian, some French and many others). The story is tricky, but still easy enough to follow. Great performances by everyone involved and no fear to look "ugly" (if Penelope Cruz can be accused of being able to look ugly that is).

. . . that keeps the viewers guessing until the end. Not unlike SOPHIE'S CHOICE, this movie, while based on a more recent conflict, deals with the long-term ramifications of war. TWICE BORN does not vilify the side opposing its main characters, unlike another recent Balkans War flick, the Russian-made AUGUST '08 (mistitled AUGUST EIGHTH on this site). Whereas the latter feature reduces the "enemy" to Baby Bayonetters akin to WWI propaganda newsreels, TWICE BORN leaves its counter forces mostly cloaked in the anonymity of snipers and artillery men. No effort is made to present either the Serbian or Muslim side of this conflict; the circle of friends at the center of this movie's focus includes a Muslim woman married to a Jewish professor. The rape scene and female sex slave warehouse are more generic war horrors than the Russian effort to lay the grounds for ethnic cleansing and\or the reemergence of Apartheid. The only stumble for TWICE BORN is a little too much emphasis on the ovaries of Penelope Cruz's character, Gemma, and her constant histrionic screaming fits, which should have been toned down a tad.